| CD review © Aart van der Wal, August 2024 |
| Thomas de Hartmann Rediscovered Violin Concerto Op. 66 – Cello Concerto Op. 57 Joshua Bell (violin), Matt Haimovitz (cello), INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra conducted by Dalia Stasevska (op. 66), MDR Leipzig Rundfunk Sinfonieochester conducted by Dennis Russell Davies (op. 57)Recording: Jan. 2014, Warsaw Philharmonic (op. 66); live May 2022, Leipzig Gewandhaus (op. 57) Pentatone PTC5187 076• 66′ •  That the history of conflict keeps repeating itself is not only a concern of the Israeli-born cellist Matt Haimovitz: I think most of us carry this with us. Unfortunately, too often and too naturally, the connection is made between the conflict in Ukraine and the music of previous periods. In other words, music and composers that have nothing to do with it.This image is reflected in the new productions and accompanying commentaries, dedicated to the Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann, who was born on 3 October 1884 in Khoruzhivka, in the Poltava province, then part of the Russian Empire, and died on 28 March 1976 in Princeton, USA. Studying with Arensky There is that (well)known statement by Gustav Mahler: ‘Meine Zeit wird kommen’. Perhaps that now applies to an even greater extent to De Hartmann, whose music is certainly worth hearing; and hopefully more than once. Music that in the early years of its creation was initially supported by Russian Late Romanticism (he studied from the age of eleven to twenty-one with the late romantic Anton Arensky, who in turn had been taught by Prokofiev, Scriabin and Rachmaninov), and in which Western European influences only began to creep in a few years later, after he was able to travel freely.  Wassily KandinskyMottl and Kandinsky Once in Munich, in 1908, it was the conductor and composer Felix Mottl who introduced him to Wagner’s operas and there was his first meeting with the painter Wassily Kandinsky, from which a lifelong friendship would develop. The almanac of the like-minded artists’ group Der Blaue Reiter, first published in May 1912 by Kandinsky and Franz Marc (they were the sole editors, these two key figures of German Expressionism), also includes an article by De Hartmann, entitled On Anarchy in Music. It explains the necessity of allowing the ‘inner feeling’ to prevail over established rules and traditions. The almanac, of course as a reprint, is still available and certainly worth reading because it gives an impressive and representative picture of the art movements that were in vogue at the time.  ‘Der Blaue Reiter’ almanac (1912)But De Hartmann not only wrote about it, he also put it into practice, first in a compositional and stylistic mixture in which Scriabin, Debussy and Messiaen relate to each other in a brotherly manner, and later in a more progressive form.Taneyev Of course, music teachers play an important role in the later development as a composer or performing musician. This also applied to the young and eager De Hartmann. After Arensky’s death in 1906, he found his new teacher in Sergei Taneyev, whose critical and sober spirit must have appealed to him from the beginning. This master of counterpoint, like Brahms (for whom he had great admiration), wrote four symphonies, of which he considered only one good enough to appear in print. That was the Fourth Symphony in C minor, which is officially recorded as his first work. Was he right? It is in any case one of his best works. In short, De Hartmann must have learned a lot from Taneyev too, because unlike Arensky, Taneyev was creatively less romantic and more rational. The contrast could not have been greater. Triumph in Saint Petersburg 1906 was also the year in which De Hartmann acquired great fame with his ballet music La Fleurette rouge , which premiered in Saint Petersburg. Tsar Nicholas II, who was sitting in the box with his entourage, was so enthusiastic afterwards that he spontaneously released De Hartmann from military service, so that he could devote himself entirely to composing. The ballet, performed by top dancers including Nijinsky, was staged in Saint Petersburg for no less than six seasons in a row, after which it was also performed in the last season of the Bolshoi in Moscow, shortly before the outbreak of the Great War. Gurdjieff De Hartmann returned to his homeland in 1914, where in 1916 he took lessons from the not uncontroversial Greek-Armenian George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who presented himself as a philosopher, mystic, choreographer, author, composer and trader. In 1917, when the Russian revolution was announced, Gurdjieff and De Hartmann, as well as a host of Gurdjieff’s students and followers, took to their heels. The journey took them via the Caucasus, first to Tbilisi (where De Hartmann briefly taught at the local conservatory) and then to Istanbul (then still Constantinople). There De Hartmann first became acquainted with oriental, exotic music. He was permanently impressed by it, as his later work in its various forms also shows.However, it did not stop at the Turkish capital: Hartmann and Gurdjieff eventually moved on, via Berlin to Paris, where the spiritualist founded the Institute for the Development of Man in Fontainebleau in 1922. The main part of the course became the spiritual relationship of man to the natural sciences.A year later, in 1923, the creative collaboration between Gurdjieff, now in the role of composer, and De Hartmann began. In the following four years, more than two hundred mainly religiously tinged, mostly exotic compositions for piano solo were created. The stay in Istanbul had clearly borne fruit in this respect as well.  George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (ca. 1925)Film music What could not be brushed aside, however, was De Hartmann’s lack of sufficient income. In 1929, lack of money and the broken relationship with Gurdjieff forced him to exchange Fontainebleau for a rented house in an unattractive Parisian suburb, where he supported himself by composing film music under the pseudonym Thomas Kross. In addition, he composed a large number of substantial works: symphonies, solo concertos, chamber music, songs and even an opera: Esther . Both conceptually and idiomatically, many styles were already passing by around that time, from jazz to impressionism, from Russian Late Romanticism to Eastern and world music, modernist features and even bitonality not excepted. Versatile, fascinating De Hartmann moved in many areas in terms of style (think in this connection of another composer who was very skilled in this: the Czech Bohuslav Martinu) and so it is not possible to discover a consistent or stable line in his oeuvre – he was after all a multi-stylist. That makes his work, through the many different influences, versatile, but also fascinating. Back in the spotlight It may be that we have only now, thanks to a number of CDs that have been released, come to see De Hartmann, but shortly after the Second World War his music was still being performed widely; and certainly not by the least, including the Budapest String Quartet, the cellists Paul Tortelier and Pablo Casals (the Catalan, a virtuoso on the cello, was a great admirer of De Hartmann’s work and who maintained a warm friendship with the composer, which partly led to a number of pieces dedicated to him), the Boston Symphony Orchestra under its chief conductor Serge Kouzzevitzky, and the flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal.  At home with Pablo Casals, with Thomas de Hartmann at the grand piano in his own composition, with Casals on the left and the violinist Alexander Schneider on the right (Prades, July 1947). Photo Gjon MiliIt was Casals who wrote that it was better not to pay attention to his Parisian colleagues. Those with real talent were rare and those who dared to be themselves were rarer still, the famous cellist said, referring to De Hartmann.Four dimensions, four ways What seeps through De Hartmann’s later oeuvre is mainly the influence of Gurdjieff’s spiritual ideas. An idea that even extended to the so-called fourth dimension, not perceptible to humans, although it can be associated with the concept of ‘time’.As De Hartmann was also familiar with the four paths ‘designated’ by Gurdjieff: the first that curbs physicality, the second feelings and emotions, the third thinking and the fourth the path to what man (for him) considers useful and necessary to be able to complete his own development. The man who consciously knows how to choose because he knows and realizes that he is human, constantly vigilant and attentive. But I must disappoint anyone who might think that De Hartmann’s music can be directly linked to this while listening. On the other hand, this music originated from the sources of inspiration provided by Gurdjieff. As is also the case for typical program and other music based on literary influences.In Hartmann’s autobiography, Our Life with Mr. Gurdjieff (Penguin Books, 1992), he notes:’To my great surprise, I took myself to account and began to realize that all that had attracted me in my youth, all that I had dearly loved in music, no longer satisfied me and was, so to say, outdated. It was clear to me […] that to be able to develop in my creative work, something was necessary – something greater or higher that I could not name. Only if I possessed this “something” would I be able to progress further and hope to have any real satisfaction from my own creation…’History makes it unreproducible for our understanding, but it was Gurdjieff who gave him the ‘tools’ that enabled De Hartmann to think and compose ‘out of the box’. One of them was that according to Gurdjieff’s teachings there was such a thing as ‘objective’ music that could have a certain effect on the emotions and psyche of the listener, regardless of taste or style. De Hartmann would remain in contact with it as a creator of music for the rest of his life.  Thomas de HartmannCello Concerto It is evident that almost every composer, apart from the influence his apprenticeship had on his work, has given certain stylistic elements from his native soil a place in his music. The multi-stylist De Hartmann was no exception. We find it in his Cello Concerto completed in 1935, just as there is evidence of Jewish influences (De Hartmann himself was not Jewish) in the second part of that same Cello Concerto, the Andante Solenne, in which the voice of a Jewish cantor resounds. The unruly piece is strongly based on oppression and persecution.In his never published Memoirs the composer sheds at least some light on the content of the Cello Concerto: that he was looking for a new form and thus came to the association with the persecution in Germany of the (Russian) Khoruzhevka Jews, but also the klezmer music of the Jewish folk musicians. With the addition that he did not want to use real Jewish folklore, which recalls a statement by the French composer Emmanuel Chabrier: ‘You want folklore? Then make it yourself!’The impetus for the Cello Concerto, if not the encouragement, came from his friend Gérard Hekking, cello teacher at the Paris Conservatoire. Hartmann completed the work in the same year that his First Symphony, the Symphonie poème op. 50, was premiered, along with the performance of his comic ballet music Babette at the Opéra in Nice. Violin Concerto The Violin Concerto dates from 1943, when De Hartmann lived in a house in Garches, one of the western suburbs of Paris, high enough to overlook the entire city. It was the (war) years that had left an indelible mark on his soul, as he wrote in his memoirs.He dedicated the work to his friend and violinist Albert Bloch, who had won first prize in the 1901 violin competition organised by the Paris Conservatoire. Bloch had played De Hartmann’s work before: in the 1930s the Violin Sonata and in 1941 the Cello Sonata arranged for violin by Bloch, a piece that, according to the composer, expressed the bitterness about slavery in his homeland (in 1941 the Nazis had invaded Ukraine and the bloodiest pogroms followed immediately afterwards).De Hartmann himself described the Violin Concerto as the ‘Klezmer Concerto’ and secretly dedicated it to the Jewish Bloch, who had fled Paris with his family and settled in Grasse near Cannes.The first performance did not take place until 16 March 1947, in the Parisian Salle Pleyel, by the Concerts Lamoureux conducted by Eugène Bigot with Georges Alès as soloist. Bloch had not survived the war. There is a recording of a much later performance, in 1963, by the French Radio Orchestra and again with Alès as soloist, but it was only released in private by De Hartmann’s widow Olga.  Thomas and Olga de Hartmann (wedding photo, 1906)Hartmann spent the last years of his life in and around Princeton, USA. He died on March 28, 1956 from a heart attack, shortly before he was to attend a performance of one of his works at the New York City Hall.The Project The importance of De Hartmann’s music was further elaborated in 2006 in the establishment of the Thomas de Hartmann Project (TdHP) , an initiative of pianist Elan Sicroff and Robert Fripp (*). The starting point was, as is the case for so many such projects: the preservation and publication of manuscripts, scores, recordings and images, in addition to giving lectures and promoting De Hartmann’s work in the broadest sense, using a variety of sources and media.Among them a recording project in the period 2011-2015, recorded in Studio I of the Music Centre of the Broadcasting Company in Hilversum, released by Basta on seven CDs and reviewed here by Siebe Riedstra. Elan Sicroff was also involved in this project in his role as pianist.In 2018, the initiative to record De Hartmann’s orchestral works followed. Two years later, Efrem approached Matt Haimovitz and Joshua Bell for a recording of the Cello Concerto and the Violin Concerto respectively. They (re)cognized the quality of the music and responded enthusiastically to Efrem’s proposal.In 2021, another important initiative took place, also within the framework of the TdHP : a festival dedicated to De Hartmann, the ‘forgotten master’, in Lviv, Ukraine, with in the foreground the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the Ukrainian-American conductor Theodore Kuchar. In addition to the three concerts, three albums with studio recordings, exclusively ‘premiere recordings’ of works by De Hartmann, were released in 2022, two of them released by Toccata Classics, the third by Nimbus.In 2023, the TdHP assisted in the realization of a number of American premieres (in Massachusetts) of De Hartmann’s Cello, Violin, and Piano Concertos. In England, the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kirill Karabits, gave the first performance of De Hartmann’s ballet suite Le Fleurette rouge . Then there was that memorable January in 2024, when the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dalia Stasevska and soloist Joshua Bell, recorded De Hartmann’s Violin Concerto in the studio (it is represented as such on this album), and performed it at a benefit concert in aid of suffering Ukraine.There is much more on the programme in the coming period, including lectures, recitals and several recordings. The Hartmann opera Esther is already in the starting blocks.Finally, an important name must be mentioned: that of Tom Daly, the heir and owner of De Hartmann’s estate. He played an important, if not dominant, role in the preparation of the performance scores and their eventual publication. Level of performance I can be brief about the interpretations: they are excellent. Technically perfect, the orchestral and solo playing above all criticism and the recordings (at two different locations) equally sublimely realized. A better or (even) more impressive tribute to this part of Thomas de Hartmann’s musical legacy seems unthinkable to me.This Pentatone album is dedicated to the memory of Tom Redmond, the recently deceased consultant and member of the project team.__________________ PS: The Cello Concerto was previously released by Pentatone at the end of September 2023, albeit only as a ‘Digital-only EP’ (PTC 5187 159). |