Ernst Krenek is a composer of undeniable importance in the pantheon of the twentieth century, but his music is one of the toughest nuts to crack for the average listener; it sounds so dispassionate, disconnected, and absorbed with matters of form and technique it is simply not a touchy-feely kind of experience. Knowing where to start might make a difference, and one might think his most famous work, the Zeitoper Jonny spielt auf (1927), would be the ticket, except that recordings of it seem impossible to find and what one ...
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Ernst Krenek is a composer of undeniable importance in the pantheon of the twentieth century, but his music is one of the toughest nuts to crack for the average listener; it sounds so dispassionate, disconnected, and absorbed with matters of form and technique it is simply not a touchy-feely kind of experience. Knowing where to start might make a difference, and one might think his most famous work, the Zeitoper Jonny spielt auf (1927), would be the ticket, except that recordings of it seem impossible to find and what one can turn up of it seems alien and inconclusive. Marcus Creed, director of the RIAS-Kammerchor, has found the Krenek work that seems to have the most reach, relevance and immediacy, Krenek's Lamentatio Jeremiae Prophetae (1941). One of the first major works Krenek undertook after his arrival in the United States in 1938, his Lamentation settings were the outgrowth of a special interest taken at the time in the renaissance and composers like Johannes Ockeghem. However, his merger of...
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