KLETZKI, P.: Piano Concerto / 3 Preludes / 3 Unpublished Piano Pieces / Fantasie (Banowetz, Russian Philharmonic, T. Sanderling) CD reviews

This Week's
Complimentary Track

Track 20 VI. Gigue

Search Options

Music Browser

Advanced Search

Subscribe to our
Newsletter

ClassicsOnline Home » KLETZKI, P.: Piano Concerto / 3 Preludes / 3 Unpublished Piano Pieces / Fantasie (Banowetz, Russian Philharmonic, T. Sanderling) > Review List

Back Cover Download

KLETZKI, P.: Piano Concerto / 3 Preludes / 3 Unpublished Piano Pieces / Fantasie (Banowetz, Russian Philharmonic, T. Sanderling)

Composer(s):	Kletzki, Paul
Artist(s)	Sanderling, Thomas, Conductor • Russian Philharmonic Orchestra • Banowetz, Joseph, piano
Period(s)	20th Century
Genre	Classical Music
Category	Concertos • Instrumental
Catalogue	8.572190
Label	Naxos
Quality	320kbps
Album Price	MP3 USD 6.99

Treated ‘like a son’ by Wilhelm Furtwängler and admired by Toscanini as both composer and conductor, Paul Kletzki was active as a composer between 1921 and 1942, relinquishing this creative outlet to become famous solely as a conductor. All the works on this disc are adventurous, sometimes improvisatory, tonal pieces which push the pianist’s technique and musicianship to the limit. The Fantasie is a colossal work of highly contrapuntal music, a sonata comprising four movements joined together within a single continuous movement, while the Piano Concerto may be counted among the most significant twentieth-century contributions to the genre.

Review By Jerry Dubins ,Fanfare,January 2011

Having been mightily impressed by a recording of Paul Kletzki’s Third Symphony and Flute Concertino on a BIS CD reviewed in Fanfare 28:3, I requested to review this new Naxos release of the composer’s works, figuring if I ended up not liking it, I’d have only myself to blame. As it turned out, I did like what I heard, quite a lot in fact. Kletzki (1900–73) was one of a handful of composers-turned-conductors who was at least as talented, if not more so, at creating his own music as he was at re-creating the music of others.

The 30-year-old Jewish Kletzki was still living in Germany when he wrote his D-Minor Piano Concerto in 1930. The piece was fully orchestrated by the composer, but it was published only in a two-piano version; and subsequently, it’s believed, the full score was destroyed during the Hitler regime, which explains the new orchestration by John Norine Jr.

Kletzki was either incredibly naive or incredibly unlucky. He fled from Nazi Germany to Italy, only to end up in the anti-Semitic hotbed of Mussolini’s Fascists. From that kettle he jumped into the frying pan of Soviet Russia during Stalin’s Great Terror. He finally found freedom from persecution in Switzerland, where he sought refuge in 1936, but not from the years of wandering that still lay ahead. Over the course of nearly the next four decades, Kletzki accepted appointments to lead orchestras in the U.K. (the Liverpool Philharmonic), the U.S. (the Dallas Symphony Orchestra), Israel (the Israel Philharmonic), Italy (La Scala), and Switzerland (the Lucerne Festival Orchestra and later the Suisse Romande Orchestra), but the engagements never turned into long-term, permanent marriages. Having lost several family members in the Holocaust, Kletzki lost his will to compose and wrote nothing further after 1942.

The loss is ours. Despite its overlay of “adventurous” harmonies, piquant dissonances, and complex rhythms, the Piano Concerto is, at its core, a deeply romantic and profoundly moving work. I’d go so far as to call it a masterpiece. To describe its general style and sound, I’d have to say that Prokofiev’s piano concertos are to the fore. Similarities abound in passages of percussive keyboard writing and lyrical melodies intentionally soured by passing bitonal harmonic progressions. But Kletzki is not quite as acerbic as Prokofiev can be at his most caustic, and Kletzki’s concerto contains many other extended passages that could pass for moments out of Miklós Rósza’s score to Ben-Hur. I wouldn’t quite put this piece in the grand virtuoso piano concerto tradition of Polish composers Moszkowski and Paderewski (Kletzki was also of Polish birth); it’s too late for that, as it is for Rachmaninoff. But it seems to inhabit a world somewhere between them and the concertos of Prokofiev and Martinů—a beautiful addition to the recorded repertoire.

As for the remaining pieces on the discmore....

Review By Phillip Scott ,Fanfare,January 2011

Paul Kletzki (1900–73) is known to music lovers as a conductor, active in recording studios in the 1950s and ’60s. Even though he was mentored by Furtwängler, Kletzki’s primary musical activity early in life was composition. His muse faded in the 1940s; the three unpublished piano pieces recorded here are possibly his final works, dating from 1940 or 1941.

Kletzki blamed his creative block on the vicissitudes of war. As a Polish Jew, he was forced to relocate to Switzerland in 1939, and the Nazis destroyed many of his early compositions. Nevertheless, there may be other reasons why he put composition behind him, as Timothy Jackson argues in his comprehensive note. Kletzki’s style was strongly rooted in a dense, late-Romantic idiom that World War II rendered well and truly passé. Though clearly in a position to conduct his own works, fashionable or not, Kletzki chose to ignore them completely. (A similar situation occurred with his contemporary Igor Markevitch.)

Little of his extant music has been recorded; apart from this issue, I only know a recent BIS CD of his Third Symphony and Flute Concerto. I requested the above disc to review because I greatly enjoyed the dynamic Third Symphony, which is a masterpiece. (The conductor on the BIS disc is also Thomas Sanderling.) Regrettably the current issue, while not without interest, is less compelling.

Kletzki’s piano music is full in texture, abounding in thick chords in both hands, octave doublings, and restless chromatic harmonic progressions. The sound might be described as post-Brahms (with some Reger and Scriabin thrown in). Like Brahms, Kletzki mines a vein of warmth and full-blooded lyricism. What he does not have is Brahms’s ability to create themes that are memorable and at the same time pregnant with potential for development. Without that “catchiness” factor, a piece like the C-Minor Fantasy of 1924 seems like too great an effort expended on thin material.

The substantial Piano Concerto, composed in 1930, is clearly modeled on the Brahms D Minor. The first movement begins with a stentorian statement from the orchestra, answered by a rippling piano solo, and the movement progresses with soloist and orchestra commenting on the material back and forth in turn. The slow movement is more successful: the protagonist is better integrated into the orchestral fabric, and the thematic material seems more memorable (sometimes quite beautiful). A light touch would have benefited the closing third movement (allegro agitato) but instead the heavy-handedness of the piano writing weighs things down, and the movement is rather drawn out at 12 and a half minutes. The composer’s original score disappeared under the Nazi regime; the orchestration we hear in this performance is by John Norine Jr. I thought some of his choices a little questionable, such as a high clarinet playing a counter-melody at 4:50 in the first movement; surely a flute or oboe would be more at home? Norine’s thick scoring fmore....

Review By Jens F. Laurson,Ionarts,December 2010

(# 9) Best Recordings of 2010

I’m a little surprised to find that there actually is another recording dedicated to the music of Paul Kletzki (1900–1973), generally known (if at all) only as a conductor. There is a 2004 BIS recording, conducted by Thomas Sanderling (the eldest of Kurt Sanderling’s conducting gaggle of sons), with the Third Symphony and a Flute Concerto. And there I thought the excuse for never having known of Kletzki’s composing side was that the Naxos disc of the Piano Concerto (and several solo piano pieces) was the first disc focusing on that repertoire. Well, the discovery wasn’t any less revealing for having come a little late; with Thomas Sanderling being at it again conducting the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra in this stunningly effective, pleasantly bulky concerto.

Kletzki—championed as a composer and conductor by Furtwängler—composed from 1921 until the early 40s, but no longer after the war; musically shell-shocked, as he explained. In any case, his music would not have fit into the post-war aesthetic in the West, where the Pole Pavel Klecki settled with his Swiss wife. His music hasn’t hitherto been associated with the “Entartete Musik / Degenerate Music” label (which I prefer not to see as a derogatory label but a reverse stamp of honor…best utilized so that good may at last come from the musical aspect of the many crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich), but it should be, of course. His music—down to the publishers’ plates—was destroyed in the 30s in Germany. He escaped, but his composing career didn’t. Even this performance—a world premiere recording—was possible only after John Norine Jr. orchestrated the work based on a 1930s two-piano arrangement since the concerto’s score—while in the possession of Breitkopf—was dutifully destroyed.

Perhaps this recording will play a part in reviving the work a little…certainly a romantic 20th century Polish piano concerto of this type should be welcome to pianists and program directors interested in veering off the usual suspects usually programmed. It’s not the sweeping walloping style of Rachmaninoff, but certainly closer to him than, say, Ravel. Timothy Jackson’s notes describe Kletzki’s style as “super-complex tonality”, which might obscure the fact that the work is perfectly tonal, with nary a chromatic twist so complicated that conservative ears would find themselves in a twist. Never wilting when the concerto asks for bold and heavy, Joseph Banowetz seems to meet all the challenges thrown his way with aplomb and dexterity and—most important—genuine sympathy.

more....

Review By Nick Barnard,MusicWeb International,May 2010

The main work here is the 1930 Piano Concerto which survived in a published 2 piano 4-hand version. Hence the orchestration used here was made recently by one John Norine Jr. How conjectural the orchestration is is not clear from the liner. Having read the note before listening to the work itself I’m a little in a quandary. Jackson writes; “we may describe the extended tonal language of Kletzki’s music as a ‘super-complex tonality’ which generates highly complicated harmonic-contrapuntal textures…” Perhaps on the page more of the tonal ambiguity is apparent—to the relatively innocent ear this is the easily approachable face of modernism. Really there is nothing here that would shock anyone attuned to Medtner. Having had an enjoyable

more....

Review By Bob McQuiston,Classical Lost and Found,April 2010

Making their première appearance on disc, all of the pieces here show Kletzki was a master craftsman, who shunned dodecaphony while pushing the envelope of tonality. They include a newly orchestrated version of his 1930 piano concerto, the only full score of which was apparently destroyed during World War II (1939–1945). We have conductor-arranger John Norine, Jr. to thank for this reconstruction, which he did in conjunction with the continuing Lost Composer’s Project. It represents a significant addition to the late-romantic/early-modern concertante repertoire.

In three movements, the outer ones are in extended sonata form and surround a lovely central andante, where a pair of chromatically sinuous ideas alternate with one another. With elements of Brahms (1833–1897) and Rachmaninov (1873–1943) at its core, the concerto is one of those works which offers something new, but is at the same time immediately appealing.

Although elements of Chopin (1810–1849) are to be found in the three piano preludes of 1923, there’s a tonal wanderlust that’s a Kletzki trademark. The demands on the performer are considerable, making the music all the more compelling.

Dating from 1940–41, the three unpublished piano pieces that follow are intriguing because they maintain their tonal aroma despite heavy chromatic outgassing. Listening to these one can only marvel at the composer’s consummate skill in juggling keys without sounding twelve-tone.

The CD concludes with the massive Fantasia in C minor for piano of 1924. Written just a year after the preludes, there’s an intellectual aura and dramatic intensity that smack of Beethoven’s (1770–1827) late piano sonatas, as well as those of Nicolai Medtner (1880–1951). In one extended super sonata form movement, perspicacious listeners will detect four connected sections. The outer ones correspond to the usual statement and recapitulation, while the inner two, consisting of a contiguous scherzo and lento, form the development. Is that an oblique reference to the Dies Irae we hear about halfway through this thought-provoking musical essay [track-10, beginning at 12:30]?

Our soloist on this CD, Joseph Banowetz, is a champion of rare piano repertoire, having given us a number of outstanding discs featuring neglected works by such composers as Mily Balakirev (1837–1910), Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894) and Sergei Taneyev (1856–1915). This release is no exception and ranks among his greatest accomplishments to date, considering the demands made on the performer. In the concerto, conductor Thomas Sanderling, son of Kurt Sanderling (b. 1912), lives up to his legendary father’s reputation, eliciting outstanding support for Mr. Banowetz from the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra.

more....

ClassicsOnline Newsletter Archive

Monthly Features on ClassicsOnline

Why choose ClassicsOnline?
ClassicsOnline is your source for classical music new releases, rare catalog, historical recordings and exclusive bargains. Our vast classical music catalog has over 1 Million tracks from more than 50,000 albums available in DRM-free MP3 (320kbps) and FLAC (lossless format). More than 500 new albums are added each month, all of which are carefully indexed, and searchable by Composer, Artist, Work and Label. Membership is free, and registration includes 5 free tracks for download. Get a free track every week and gain access to exclusive classical deals when you subscribe to our newsletter. ClassicsOnline was honored in 2010 as the Best Classical Download Site by the MIDEM Classical Awards Jury.

Some titles may not be available in all countries because of possible copyright or licensing restrictions.

Login to ClassicsOnline

Email Address	Password


Forgot your password	Haven't registered yet?

Genres

Artists

Composers

Labels

Browse

Highlights

Current Specials

Search

Help

Login