Aimez-vous Krenek?

[verismissimo]

Listening with pleasure to Krenek's Piano Sonata No 3, I wonder why his work is so neglected?

It's played (excellently) by Glenn Gould - on a CD with the Berg Sonata and Schoenberg's Three Pieces Op 11.

The only other Krenek I've ever known is his opera, Jonny Spielt Auf. Clearly, like his contemporary Hindemith, he wrote lots - his third sonata is Op 92 No 4.

What else should I be auditioning?

[Pabmusic]

...What else should I be auditioning?

I have the Symphonic Elegy for Strings (live concert, Mitropoulos/NY Phil). I's a 40-minute string piece!

[edashtav]

Listening with pleasure to Krenek's Piano Sonata No 3, I wonder why his work is so neglected?

...

I'm afraid the answer is that the owners of Krenek's estate, mainly his family, demand excessive performing rights fees thus reducing the number of his pieces that get programmed. A great shame!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm afraid the answer is that the owners of Krenek's estate, mainly his family, demand excessive performing rights fees thus reducing the number of his pieces that get programmed. A great shame!

Took the words from my keyboard, ed.

[verismissimo]

I'm afraid the answer is that the owners of Krenek's estate, mainly his family, demand excessive performing rights fees thus reducing the number of his pieces that get programmed. A great shame!

How foolish!

[ahinton]

Whilst not the only example of composer estates making life frustratingly onerous for those wishing to perform his/her music, that of Krenek is arguably one of the worst, from what I've heard and read. Krenek was a bewilderingly prolific composer well able to reinvent himself without turning his back on past achievements and it is indeed a very sad fact of life that so little of his music is performed these days; there are recordings of some of it, of course (there are even a few things on YouTube), but his discography is not really expanding, largely for the same reason, no doubt. Is it any wonder, therefore, that his name is one of the more glaring omissions from the recently published BBC Composer of the Week list (along with Ernest Bloch)? To anyone who doesn't know the composer's work at all, I'd suggest the best starting point to be the Symphonic Elegy mentioned by Pabmusic above and the earlier first two symphonies written when the composer was only in his early 20s - the second is highly ambitious and, I think, achieves all that it sets out to do in a work of very considerable power.

Not known as a pianist as far as I am aware, Krenek devoted considerable attention to the instrument, not least in writing four concertos for it and seven sonatas that span most of his long creative career. The eight string quartets also deserve attention, the fifth being on a scale equivalent to the Schönberg D minor and Carter 1.
For anyone interested, there's useful information at http://orelfoundation.org/index.php/...s/ernst_krenek although, unfortunately, the links provided for the ERNST–KRENEK–INSTITUTE PRIVATE FOUNDATION on the title of each piece in the works list does not work, but it can be accessed directly at http://krenek.at/; the Orel Foundation list of works is more comprehensive than the krenek.at one in that it has much information about his early music and a handful of other pieces to which the composer did not allocate opus numbers. Thre's also a Krenek Society at http://www.ernstkrenek.com but this seems not to have published anything much yet.

[gurnemanz]

On the meagre basis of knowing only one quite short work by him, the answer is "j'aime". It is a vocal setting of Goethe's Monolog der Stella, op. 57 on Marlis Petersens's excellent Eternal Feminine album, a virtuoso piece, which sounds fiendishly hard to sing with leaps and runs and it works or me.

[Sir Velo]

Malheureusement, je ne connais pas Krenek, mais j'aime Brahms.

[umslopogaas]

Apart from the one piano sonata recorded by Glen Gould already mentioned above, recordings seem very elusive. I have no other Krenek works on LP or CD and he doesnt get a mention in the 2010 Penguin Guide.

[Pabmusic]

This blog has three Krenek recordings - three symphonies and Johnny spielt auf:

http://ladiscotecaclasica.blogspot.com

[DublinJimbo]

I have a recent recording of the 1st Violin Concerto (available on the Farao label). I'd definitely recommend the work.

Apart from that, all I have in my collection by Krenek is an Oehms release of piano music which includes the 2nd, 3rd and 7th sonatas, the 1st Symphony as part of a Nimbus disc headlined by Franz Schreker, 12 Variations in 3 Movements (for piano) as part of a 3-CD set titled Forbidden Sounds: Composers in Exile on Capriccio, and the Marlis Petersen performance mentioned above (#7).

I would definitely be interested in exploring more of Krenek's output. A quick search on Qobuz results in quite a long list, which I will now probably dip into thanks to this thread.

[Richard Barrett]

Krenek's 2nd symphony is a fantastic piece, as you might imagine would happen if something like the manner of Webern's op.6 would be re-expanded to Mahlerian proportions. He also wrote, decades later (in collaboration with Gottfried Michael Koenig), one of the earliest pieces to combine voices with electronic sounds, the Pentecost oratorio Spiritus intelligentiae sanctus. I think his music is usually trying to do something interesting and/or profound but it's a bit let down by a lack of much individuality behind the enormous variety of styles he worked his way through.

[ahinton]

Krenek's 2nd symphony is a fantastic piece, as you might imagine would happen if something like the manner of Webern's op.6 would be re-expanded to Mahlerian proportions. He also wrote, decades later (in collaboration with Gottfried Michael Koenig), one of the earliest pieces to combine voices with electronic sounds, the Pentecost oratorio Spiritus intelligentiae sanctus. I think his music is usually trying to do something interesting and/or profound but it's a bit let down by a lack of much individuality behind the enormous variety of styles he worked his way through.

Yes, Krenek's Second Symphony is as you so eloquently put it.

Actually, there's quite a fair amount of his music out there on YouTube (doubtless much to the general chagrin of the evidently greedy Krenek estate); this includes, but is by no means limited to, all five symphonies, piano sonatas 2, 3, 4 & 7, string quartets 4-8, both violin concertos and the first and third of his four piano concertos, of which the latter is apparently both conducted and played by Mitropoulos.

Yes, that enormity of styles can be a problem for the listener trying to get to grips with such a vast output, just as perhaps it might at times have been for the composer himself - and maybe that let down which you mention might also in part be down to his having written so very many works (241 with opus numbers alone), although he seemed successfully to sustain himself and his creativity on a pretty high level during the two decades from the first piano sonata of 1919 in which he wrote almost 90 works.

[verismissimo]

Thanks to all (and especially to a hinton) in what I feared might be a thread of sparse response.

My Glenn Gould CD tells me that the pianist included the sonata Op 92 no 4 regularly in his programmes, including in his final one in Los Angeles in April 1964. I'd love to read Gould's notes (always enlightening), but SONY have printed them so tiny that I can't, even with a magnifying glass. Dumb.

Thus far, I've invested in the Third Symphony. Others later, I expect.

[Rolmill]

The only Krenek in my CD collection is a recording by the RIAS chamber choir of his Lamentations of Jeremiah. I haven't listened to it for quite a while, but remember it as a strange mix of tone row and plainchant; I'm afraid I found it long and almost unremittingly dour despite quite varied use of the choral forces. Given the positive messages above, I must try it again to see if I can get more from it - or perhaps give the Symphonic Elegy or the 2nd symphony a go instead.