The Cleveland Orchestra
Part of: Franz Welser-Möst and Fall of the Weimar Republic: Dancing on the Precipice
Performers
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, Music Director and Conductor
Program
KRENEK Little Symphony
G. MAHLER Adagio from Symphony No. 10 in F-sharp Major
BARTÓK String Quartet No. 3 (arr. Stanley Konopka for double string orchestra)
BARTÓK Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.This Concert in Context
Although he is much less celebrated today, Ernst Krenek was among the most recognized and performed composers of the interwar period. He was well-known for his ability to edit and complete other composers’ unfinished works, including Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, for which he provided orchestration of the first and third movements. Krenek composed across a broad array of forms and genres from symphonic and choral music to Zeitoper, a popular operatic form that drew on and made references to contemporary technology and popular music. His Jonny spielt auf, composed in 1926, was the most widely performed Zeitoper of its day, with a staggering 421 performances in its first season alone. In the charged political atmosphere of the 1920s and 1930s, however, music often found itself swept up in Weimar’s culture wars. Modern works, in particular, often came under particularly fierce attack. Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin was banned on moral grounds shortly after its 1926 premiere in Cologne, while Krenek was ultimately derided as a composer of “degenerate music” by the Nazis and forced into exile.
—Brendan Fay, author of Classical Music in Weimar Germany