A Composer Reborn

There’s music that gets played all the time and shouldn’t. How many times have you heard the Moldau, the Bartered Bride, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik?

There’s also music that never or almost never gets played and should. Zelenka comes to mind, as well as Reinecke—guys who languish in undeserved obscurity.

As does a guy named Hans Gal, who appeared on a recording done by a new follower on Twitter, Kenneth Woods. Well, there’s a lot I don’t know—and more and more piling up every day—so it was time to head for Wikipedia.

Which has, I was relieved to find, only a couple of paragraphs on Gal; clearly he’s not as mainstream as I had feared. Ironic, because at one point in his life he was well known and much played.

Born in a small town near Vienna, he attended the New Vienna Conservatory and went on to win an important competition, the Columbia Schubert Centenary Prize, in 1928. The conductor Furtwangler and composer Richard Strauss helped him obtain the position of director of the Mainz Conservatory. This lasted until 1933, when the Germans overtook Mainz. Gal, a Jew, was dismissed and his music, extremely popular and influential through the twenties, was banned.

Fortunately, there’s a backup. Donald Tovey invites him to Scotland, and he assumes a position at the University of Edinburgh. All is well—as far as we know—until about 1940, when, according to one source, Churchill said, “collar the lot” and Gal and other German émigrés found themselves in an internment camp. Did I mention—there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know?

It was, as you can imagine, a pretty distinguished bunch, this cultured group of German Jews who had not so much escaped the camps as found a decidedly better one—so what do they do?

Write and stage a revue, called “What a Life!”

It took, according to Wikipedia, about six months to determine who was who, and most of the Germans were released. Presumably, Gal goes back to the University and resumes his career. As well, he edits the Brahms symphonies, composes a lot of chamber music, symphonies, songs and incidental music.

He was played extensively in the ‘20’s but, by the end of his life he was forgotten. (Grammar break—the computer has just green-squiggled that last phrase and suggested “the end of his life forgot him!” Your choice, dear Reader!) His symphony number four, his last work in the genre, was premiered in 1972, and then sat on the shelf for another 30 years.

Then along came Kenneth Woods, a writer / cellist / conductor / rock guitarist, who decides to pair the Gal with another composer of four symphonies—Robert Schumann. And it’s well received, becoming a Gramophone Editor’s Choice in 2012.

Woods, in a short clip introducing the disc, makes the point that Gal never jumped on board whatever musical style was fashionable at the time—the  Second Viennese School, or twelve-tone music. The music sounds crisp, distinctive and at least in the clip below, wonderfully lyrical.

Woods also mentions that it must have been frustrating for Gal’s daughter Eva to have to wait thirty years for the rediscovery of her father’s work. She replies with understatement: “the first thirty years are the hardest.” In fact, thirty years is not too long—in the case of Bach, it was one hundred years. And the sad fact is that there are many fine composers that we will never hear.

Kenneth—I’ve just bought the Gal Symphony No. 4 and the Schumann Symphony No. 2, and downloaded them to my iPad. Now then—could I suggest another forgotten composer?

Gunnar Johansen.