A new live recording from Ensemble Modern and HK Gruber offers a vibrant snapshot of German music between 1920 and 1933, showcasing works that the Nazis condemned as 'too modern, too jazzy, too Jewish'. The album features compositions by Hindemith, Korngold, Schoenberg, and Weill, all of whom eventually fled to the United States.
Hindemith's Kammermusik No 1, premiered in 1922, was criticised for its 'lewdness and frivolity'. Gruber's performance embraces its neo-classical spikiness and jazz-age energy with cartoonish glee. In contrast, Korngold's music for Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1920) is given a lively reading that tempers Viennese neo-Romanticism with acerbic wit.
Schoenberg's Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, premiered under Klemperer in 1930, is an eight-minute piece of existential angst. Johannes Schöllhorn's 1993 chamber version is mined for every dissonant colour. The highlight is Gruber and Christian Muthspiel's arrangement of Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins, sanctioned by the Kurt Weill Foundation. Wallis Giunta delivers a biting performance as the protagonist, while Amarcord's male quartet portray her rapacious family. Gruber's razor-sharp interpretation drips idiomatic venom.
