About the album
Thilo Dahlmann and Hedayet Djeddikar.
"I sow, I see no seed, and I remain mournfully silent at home." With these words of Johann Mayerhofer full of mourning and melancholy from Schubert's "Abendstern", we as performers look back on the content of this CD. It juxtaposes compositions that could hardly be more opposite.
The past century, like so many before and after it, has not only sown good seeds. Norbert Glanzberg had to experience one of the greatest human catastrophes of the century himself, the Holocaust. Long after the end of the war, he managed to clothe the horror he suffered in music through the words of other persecutees and victims of National Socialism. Music that could not be more beautiful in many places. A beauty that is only painful to bear in view of the texts set to music.
In selecting the pieces for this recording, we were guided by Norbert Glanzberg's compositional approach of countering horror with beauty. Therefore, folk song settings by Johannes Brahms form the beginning of this CD. Songs that, like few other songs in the Romantic lied repertoire, can embody the greatest possible innocence and impartiality in text and music.
It is precisely this contrast that illustrates in our eyes the breaking of human and civilisational culture through the horrors of the Holocaust. A "break-up" that Norbert Glanzberg has masterfully set to music in his cycle "In Memoriam".
Thilo Dahlmann und Hedayet Djeddikar.
"Ich säe, ich sehe keine Saat, und ich bleibe klagend stumm zu Hause." Mit diesen von Trauer und Melancholie erfüllten Worten Johann Mayerhofers aus Schuberts "Abendstern" blicken wir als Interpreten auf den Inhalt dieser CD zurück. Sie stellt Kompositionen nebeneinander, die gegensätzlicher kaum sein könnten.
Das vergangene Jahrhundert hat, wie so viele davor und danach, nicht nur gute Samen gesät. Norbert Glanzberg musste eine der größten menschlichen Katastrophen des Jahrhunderts selbst erleben, den Holocaust. Noch lange nach Kriegsende gelang es ihm, das von ihm erlittene Grauen mit den Worten anderer Verfolgter und Opfer des Nationalsozialismus in Musik zu kleiden. Musik, die an vielen Stellen nicht schöner sein könnte. Eine Schönheit, die nur angesichts der vertonten Texte schmerzlich zu ertragen ist.
Bei der Auswahl der Stücke für diese Aufnahme haben wir uns von Norbert Glanzbergs kompositorischem Ansatz leiten lassen, dem Grauen das Schöne entgegenzusetzen. Den Anfang dieser CD bilden daher Volksliedvertonungen von Johannes Brahms. Lieder, die wie wenige andere Lieder des romantischen Liedrepertoires die größtmögliche Unschuld und Unbefangenheit in Text und Musik verkörpern können.
Es ist genau dieser Kontrast, der uns den Bruch der menschlichen und zivilisatorischen Kultur durch die Schrecken des Holocaust vor Augen führt. Ein "Zusammenbruch", den Norbert Glanzberg in seinem Zyklus "In Memoriam" meisterhaft vertont hat.
Press
As a whole, still an original program and well worth listening.
Luister, 01-9-2023
Dahlmann has color in both the high and low register, Djeddikar makes the Bösendorfer Konzertflügel Imperial from 1922 shimmer.
De Volkskrant, 27-7-2023
The simple is the beautiful - and the beautiful is a way of at least dealing with unbearable suffering. This hope seems to shine behind Nobert Glanzberg's song cycle "In Memoriam", composed in 1983, which deliberately takes up late Romantic traditions to tell of unprecedented crimes and unimaginable torments in a tonal and highly melodic way. The poems of persecuted and murdered resistance fighters selected by the composer similarly rescue dignity and humanity in the colours and forms of a cultural tradition.
Thilo Dahlmann and his accompanist Hedayet Jonas Djeddikar are aware that this beauty is almost unbearable. They therefore approach the songs with the required historical precision, which is reflected in the clear, detailed diction of the bass-baritone and the sovereign, completely unagitated performance of the pianist.
The result is an often oppressive, purposefully disturbing, but also deeply moving recording, for which Dahlmann and Djeddikar have found a conclusion that could not be more fitting. After Brahms and Glanzberg, Schubert's "Abendstern" once again plunges the world into twilight.
Kulturabdruck.de, 19-7-2023
One voice, two hands, an hour of Lieder and a mighty concert grand piano: the 'less is more' approach to this intimist record achieves maximum effect.
Glanzberg's songs on texts by war witnesses are intimate and intense, dark and hushed - like a diary full of painful secrets. Dahlmann's voice fits this palette perfectly. Djeddikar's delicate fingerpicking ballet makes the songs tremble with emotion. And then there is the unsung hero: the Bösendorfer Konzertflügel Imperial (1922) that sinks your ears into the sound like a warm knife in a lump of butter.
De Standaard, 19-7-2023
Thilo Dahlmann and Hedayet Djeddikar turn to the songs in such a way that the texts become very clear without any exaggeration.
Pizzicato, 07-7-2023
Play album
