Like other musicians
active around his time such as Furtwängler, Klemperer, Victor
de Sabata, Artur Schnabel or Wilhelm Kempff, Georg Tintner viewed
composition as his major musical activity, whilst seeking sanctuary
in performance as a means of earning a steady income. Thankfully
over recent years the compositions of artists such as these
have become more widely known thanks in large part to several
recordings becoming available. Budget labels including Arte
Nova and Timpani have played a large part, Naxos/Marco Polo
too, but also others such as Orfeo and Wergo, often championing
a particular composer. This disc of world premiere recordings
presents the case for Georg Tintner’s output, or at least a
representative sample of it. Leaving his uncompleted late opera
aside, he did write choral music – his Steht auf! was
adopted by the Vienna Boys Choir when he was one of their members
in the 1930s – and also a number of songs for female voice.
Just as he was a
prodigious conductor from an early age – becoming assistant
conductor at the Vienna State Opera at the age of 19 – many
of the compositions here stem from the early to mid-period of
his life. Even a cursory glance at the titles for many of the
works tells you much about the man and his outlook. There is
a marked belief in the supremacy of form. As in Furtwängler’s
writing, Tintner’s belief in the sonata and the fugue reigns
supreme, almost to the extent that form becomes an end inextricably
linked with the survival of musical culture beyond the politically
turbulent times they lived through. Klemperer, in his string
quartets at least, does not project this feeling so strongly,
whilst Schnabel and Kempff utilise form for lighter, though
still well intentioned ends, on the whole. More so than with
any of the others though one picks up on the thread of personal
tragedy that accompanies Tintner’s life from his childhood as
a Jew to his choice to take his own life when no longer able
to express himself through music, either as composer or conductor,
weakened by cancer.
So this is not joyous
music per se, but in its tersely argued pages there is
material of undeniable substance. The major works, in terms
of length at least, would naturally make the most immediate
impact on the listener. The violin sonata presents writing so
assured for the violin that given Cho-Liang Lin’s undoubted
commitment to it, it is almost a shame not to hear him in other
works. Still, with its four movements taking turns at portraying
the emotions such as love, defiance, sorrow and triumph, one
is taken on quite an intense roller-coaster ride across a course
of considerable highs and lows.
Helen Huang accompanies
with much need confidence of voicing and fingering, which she
brings to the other items on the disc too. Other highlights
for me are the single movement piano sonata, which treats concision
as a laudable compositional end in itself. Late Romantic in
mould though its heady youthful mix of influences from Brahms
via Chopin and Scriabin is noteworthy in one so young. The
Chopin variations perhaps indicate something of the young composer’s
own pianistic prowess. The Prelude, Auf den tod eines
Freundes and Trauermusik are the most poignant, underlining
the nature of personal loss that affected Tintner so much. To
my ears, the two Fugues remind of the importance of Bach as
a bedrock of musical values above all else, and the loss that
music suffers when it abandons quality of humanity and constancy
at its core. Tintner saw serialism as the embodiment of this
abandonment, and recognised that the twelve-tone experiment
would be short lived.
Supported by brief
but informative notes the excellent performances present Tintner
as a serious and principled composer.
Evan Dickerson
Helen Huang (piano);
* Cho-Liang Lin (violin)
