Anne Sofie von Otter's latest album disturbs, provokes and consoles as it reminds us of some of the darkest years in the history of inhumanity.
Terezin/Theresienstadt is a gathering together of music written by Jewish composers imprisoned at Theresienstadt prison camp during World War II. There are disarminglydirect popular songs and marches, fully-fledged artsongs and even some grimly ironic cabaret such as Martin Roman's We're riding wooden horses.
Few singers apart from von Otter could convince in three demanding sonnet settings by Viktor Ullmann and yet be comfortable with the emotion-charged simplicity of the opening song (Ilse Weber's I wander through Theresienstadt, a ballad written by a German nurse who chose to follow her young charges to death).
Sharing the bill with the mezzo and her pianist, Bengt Forsberg, are the baritone Christian Gerhaher, agreeably agile in voice for three Rimbaud settings by Hans Krasa, and English violinist Daniel Hope, who dashes off an earthy solo sonata by Erwin Schulhoff.
The long, malevolent arm of the Third Reich comes closer to home with Austrian Georg Tintner who fled Europe in 1938 and settled in New Zealand between 1940 and 1954. In the decade leading up to his death in 1999, Tintner gained international renown as a conductor, particularly for his Bruckner recordings.
Tintner was one of the forces behind the Auckland Regional Orchestra when it arose from the ashes of the Symphonia in 1981. But a new Naxos recording allows us to see that he was also composing while he was in this country, writing major works that included a full-scale violin sonata. Tintner's language is very much in the vein of early Berg and Schoenberg, and this heady sonata could not wish for a more committed performance than it is given here by violinist Cho-Liang Lin and pianist Helen Huang.
Huang completes the programme, including the brooding Trauermusik and some charming variations on Chopin's A major Prelude. The short piano piece On the Death of a Friend is an instrumental that shares the mood and wistfulness, of some of von Otter's Terezin ballads.
* Anne Sofie von Otter, Terezin/Theresienstadt (Deutsche Grammophon 477 6546)
* George Tintner, Instrumental Music (Naxos 8.570258)
