New Budapest Orpheum Society - Jewish Cabaret and Political Songs 1900-1945
New Budapest Orpheum Society
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano. Jewish Cabaret and Political Songs 1900-1945
Cedille Records 90000 065, 2002
CD 1
01. Wiener Fiakerlied (Gustav Pick) 5:06
02. ...Nach Großwardein (Hermann Rosenzweig / Anton Groiss) 5:58
03. Der jüdische Landsturm (Viennese Broadside) 3:24
04. Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn (Viennese Broadside) 3:08
05. Die koschere Mischpoche! (Viennese Broadside) 2:44
06. Jüdisches Fiaker Lied (Gustav Pick / Carl Lorens) 5:32
07. Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars (Irving Berlin) 3:09
08. Liebeslied an ein Proletariermädchen (Gerhard Bronner / Peter Hammerschlag) 2:57
09. Couplet des Schmafu (Adolf Müller / Johann Nestroy) 2:58
10. Eine kleine Sehnsucht (Friedrich Holländer) 3:56
11. Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt (Friedrich Holländer) 3:53
12. Gigerlette (Arnold Schoenberg from Brettl-Lieder) 1:50
13. Mahnung (Arnold Schoenberg from Brettl-Lieder) 2:39
14. Haman-Arie (Gustav Pick) 1:57
15. Ballade von der 'Judenhure' Marie Sanders (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 3:06
16. Der Graben (Hanns Eisler / Kurt Tucholsky) 2:35
17. Solidaritätslied (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 2:02
18. An den kleinen Radioapparat (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 1:20
19. Und es sind die finstren Zeiten (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 0:52
20. Havu L'venim (Kurt Weill / Alexander Penn) 2:06
21. Hine Achal'la Bachalili (Paul Dessau / Jacob Schönberg) 4:01
22. Gam Hayam (Darius Milhaud / Levi Ben-Amitai) 1:19
23. Holem Tza'adi (Darius Milhaud / Jacob Schönberg) 2:51
24. Ra'Inu Amalenu (Stefan Wolpe / Levi Ben-Amitai) 1:43
25. Ba'a M'nucha (Kurt Weill / Nathan Alterman) 4:23
26. Banu (Aaron Copeland / Nathan Alterman) 1:39
CD 2 (English)
01. Wiener Fiakerlied (Gustav Pick) 5:03
02. ...Nach Großwardein (Hermann Rosenzweig / Anton Groiss) 5:56
03. Der jüdische Landsturm (Viennese Broadside) 3:23
04. Der Leb, der Hersch und der Kohn (Viennese Broadside) 3:07
05. Die koschere Mischpoche! (Viennese Broadside) 2:41
06. Jüdisches Fiaker Lied (Gustav Pick / Carl Lorens) 5:34
07. Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars (Irving Berlin) 3:09
08. Liebeslied an ein Proletariermädchen (Gerhard Bronner / Peter Hammerschlag) 2:54
09. Couplet des Schmafu (Adolf Müller / Johann Nestroy) 2:57
10. Eine kleine Sehnsucht (Friedrich Holländer) 4:00
11. Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt (Friedrich Holländer) 4:01
12. Gigerlette (Arnold Schoenberg from Brettl-Lieder) 1:52
13. Mahnung (Arnold Schoenberg from Brettl-Lieder) 2:40
14. Haman-Arie (Gustav Pick) 2:02
15. Ballade von der 'Judenhure' Marie Sanders (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 3:10
16. Der Graben (Hanns Eisler / Kurt Tucholsky) 2:35
17. Solidaritätslied (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 2:02
18. An den kleinen Radioapparat (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 1:21
19. Und es sind die finstren Zeiten (Hanns Eisler / Bertolt Brecht) 0:55
20. Havu L'venim (Kurt Weill / Alexander Penn) 2:06
21. Hine Achal'la Bachalili (Paul Dessau / Jacob Schönberg) 4:01
22. Gam Hayam (Darius Milhaud / Levi Ben-Amitai) 1:19
23. Holem Tza'adi (Darius Milhaud / Jacob Schönberg) 2:51
24. Ra'Inu Amalenu (Stefan Wolpe / Levi Ben-Amitai) 1:42
25. Ba'a M'nucha (Kurt Weill / Nathan Alterman) 4:23
26. Banu (Aaron Copeland / Nathan Alterman) 1:39
Philip V. Bohlman - Artistic Director
Ilya Levinson - Music Director & Arranger
Stewart Figa - baritone
Julia Bentley - mezzo-soprano
Deborah Bard - soprano
Ilya Levinson - piano
Peter Blagoev - violin
Stewart Miller - bass
Hank Tausend - percussion
Elizabeth Ko - flute
Jon Steinhagen - American lyrics
Cita:
The name may sound Hungarian, but this 2 CD set of classically oriented Jewish show music comes from Chicago. The "band" is named for a popular performing company from fin de siecle Vienna (The Budapest Orpheum Society) and its eight members range from cantor Deborah Bard to Bulgarian violinist Peter Blagoev to jazz-klez (a lá Maxwell Street Klezmer Band) to Hank Tausend. With Dancing On the Edge Of A Volcano, they present a spectrum of European Jewish sociopolitical songs -- some subtly so, ranging from early Viennese cabaret to Zionist songs from Israel. In an unusual format move, one of the CDs contains the songs in original Yiddish or German and the other in English. This allows the listener to hear what the song is actually about while listening, instead of with eyes glued to the liner notes. Unfortunately the Zionist songs in Hebrew are not reproduced this way, but are repeated verbatim on the second disc.
As the 43 pages of liner notes will tell you, these "popular" Viennese cabaret songs are complex and themselves danced in an economic balance during their heyday. Often based on oral tradition, the genre evolved from early modern Jewish wedding and theatre music and incorporated snips of familiar folk melodies as well as a sophisticated batch of exotic and non-Jewish contemporary influences. Meant to be used in a vaudeville hodgepodge, they incorporate stories and commentary into everyday settings. The early songs, often printed as anonymous broadsides, present very stereotypical and sometimes charming views of Jewish people, but also portray a relatively safe, if changing environment.
"If we Jews are sent off fighting
You will hear a dreadful moan.
Party's over! No firstnighting!
No one gets a business loan!"
goes "The Jewish Country Regiment." The songs here recall Broadway musicals (particularly "Fiddler On the Roof") and Tom Lehrer, and the set list even includes Irving Berlin's "Cohen Owes Me Ninety-Seven Dollars" in English, an American immigrant ballad with the same roots as its Viennese cousins.
By the thirties, however, the drums of Hades had begun to beat and though the songs are similar, there is a sense of uneasiness about them. Many are love songs, apparently with hidden meanings. The last song in this group, "Warning" (by Arnold Schoenberg!) suggests to a young girl, "Stop and think and please take care." Another, "Do A Little Dreaming," uses a tango arrangement and suggests love and dreams can provide relief from the increasing greyness of prewar life. During the World War II and the Holocaust, some composers were fortunate to be in exile, including the team of Brecht and Eisler who dominate the third section of the album. These dark, strident songs are hardly cute and are about trenches, Hitler, exile and solidarity, and they pack the punch of cigarette smoke in a dark bomb shelter. One very effective track that touches even non-Jews is "Ballad of the Jewish Whore, Marie Sanders," who was in the streets with a shaven head for loving a Jewish man.
The Zionist songs are different and though they don't integrate particularly well with the other tracks, they do provide a contrast. The lyrics were written by poets on site in the kibbutzes, and usually deal with landscape and work, more stereotypical of Socialists than European Jews. Eventually these songs were arranged by modern composers: Weill, Dessau, Milhaud, and even Aaron Copeland, who united a song of joy with a folk dance song in "Appalachian Spring" fashion.
The musicians here are quite skillful and the arrangements seem to be true to their original form, which in most cases was a mix of Eastern European Jewish and urban Viennese styles. The singers, baritone Stewart Figa and especially the women, mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley and soprano Deborah Bard, have classically trained voices. Still, they manage to inject quite a bit of character and color into their performances. My guess is that the people who sang these cabaret songs also had solid, trained voices or they would have been hit by rotten tomatoes once too often! It may, however, be difficult for a down-home folkie to appreciate this album as recreational music when faced with the double headed beast of show tunes and classical composers, although klezmer fans are more likely to appreciate this album. But whatever one's personal tastes, these CDs, and the massive liner notes, are really interesting, and a trip through the entire album, especially the English disc, can be a moving, if chilling, experience. - Judith Gennett
Cita:
Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano is an innovative historical package filled with American-Jewish music, featuring popular and political songs from Jewish cabaret. The origin of the music ranges from 1900 to 1945.
The songs range from ballads to folk songs such as "Viennese Coachman's Song," as well as Zionist pioneer songs such as "Bring the Bricks" and "We Beheld Our Toil." Songs like "There Comes Peace" are particularly relevant today. Some songs, like "Do a Little Dreaming," deal with the question of tradition versus modern life.
The music overall is bright and upbeat, although all the songs are in Yiddish, their original language. With 26 tracks on two discs, there is plenty of music for everyone.
The CDs come with an incredibly detailed booklet, with 43 pages of history and background to the music, as well as a detailed bibliography. After that appear lyrics to every song in both Yiddish and English. The performers are cantors and Jewish musical directors, as well as opera stars and everything in between. The New Budapest Orpheum Society has revived this tradition of Jewish cabaret in order to share the old songs with a new generation, and offer them again to the people who loved them years ago. - Valerie Frankel
Cita:
This fascinating collection of Jewish cabaret, popular, and political songs contains 26 numbers divided into four groups: From the Periphery to the Habsburg Metropole; The Crisis of Tradition and Modernity; Response and Resistance (Political Songs); and finally, Zionist and Pioneer Songs. Stylistically, the music ranges from the simplest strophic "folk" ballad to such exquisite settings as Friedrich Holländer's Eine kleine Sehnsucht, or Darius Milhaud's Brasilian-flavored arrangement of Holem Tza'adi. Indeed, the list of composers represented is quite striking. In addition to the expected names, such as Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler, and alongside the long-forgotten or anonymous, you also find Arnold Schoenberg (two of his Bettl-Lieder), Stefan Wolpe, Aaron Copland, Paul Dessau, and even Irving Berlin. Better still, this two-for-the-price-of-one set not only includes extensive booklet notes and complete texts and translations, but all of the German/Yiddish numbers are repeated on Disc 2 in English, allowing the words to be understood in context.
Now none of this would matter, of course, unless the singers took unusual care over matters of diction, and indeed every word registers with crystalline clarity. While laudable in itself, and marvelously done by mezzo Julia Bentley and soprano Deborah Bard, you might find baritone Stewart Figa a bit too eager to lapse into a Rex Harrison-like Sprechstimme, however authentic this stylistic conceit might be. Still, there's little to quibble about with respect to the vocals, and the musical arrangements by New Budapest Orpheum Society musical director Ilya Levinson sound absolutely marvelous (Cedille's state-of-the-art recording doesn't hurt either). To do this release justice, a review would have to be much longer than space allows here, and readers interested in this sort of project surely know who they are. To them this will be self-recommending. So let me conclude by saying this: More than a "classical" or "crossover" production, this set defies easy categorization. There's a world of history and culture hidden in this innocent-looking collection of songs from the first half of the 20th century, and you don't have to be Jewish to relish their richness. - David Hurwitz
Cita:
There's more to traditional Jewish popular music than klezmer clarinet and Broadway-style fiddling on the roof. Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano revives the lively genre of Jewish cabaret and music hall songs from early twentieth-century Vienna and other vibrant centers of Jewish life.
Based on new scholarship from the University of Chicago, the CD entertains with songs of self-deprecating humor, political and cultural commentary, and social idealism (made all the more poignant by the unthinkable catastrophe soon to unfold).
You'll discover unfamiliar works by familiar names -- Weill, Milhaud, and even Schoenberg -- plus gems by once-prominent songsmiths such as Friedrich Holländer, a cabaret compatriot of Weill in the intimate cellar nightspots of Weimar Germany, and the inventive and gifted Hanns Eisler, closely associated with the cutting-edge political theater of Bertolt Brecht.
The songs offer vivid storytelling set to music drawn from varied sources including waltz, tango, and jazz. Featured singers are two Chicago cantors, exuberant soprano Deborah Bard and idiomatic baritone Stewart Figa, and mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley, a sublime and highly sought interpreter of 20th century music. Cabaret-jazz accompaniment is by the (all-American) New Budapest Orpheum Society, an ensemble of violin, double bass, piano, and percussion.
Cita:
An adventurous new release from Cedille Records, “Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano" (Cedille CDR 90000 065), revives the long-overlooked genres of Jewish cabaret, popular, and political songs from 1900 to 1945.
Performers are the (all-American) New Budapest Orpheum Society, featuring Chicago-area cantors Stewart Figa, baritone, and Deborah Bard, soprano; and mezzo-soprano Julia Bentley, a celebrated young classical singer especially noted for her interpretations of contemporary repertoire.
The program is a two-disc set, with an 80-page booklet, priced as a single CD. The first CD presents songs in their original languages; the second offers many of the same songs in English translations. Together, there are more than two hours of songs ranging from broadly comical jabs at Jewish cultural stereotypes to sultry romantic ballads and rousing political calls to arms, to heroic anthems and quiet celebrations of the emerging Jewish homeland in the Middle East.
Musically, the songs illustrate a rich range of styles, including tango, samba, traditional Jewish folk tunes, jazz, and late German Romanticism. In these songs one also hears the stirrings of modern musical theater and nightclub cabaret.
The program unfolds in four broad, roughly chronological themes. Songs arising from the Jewish urban migration poke fun at the nouveau riche, the privileged, and Jewish cultural stereotypes. The second group of songs includes sophisticated and poignant popular ballads of romantic love and longing, including two ultra-romantic entries by Friedrich Holländer (1896-1976), one written for Marlene Dietrich in the classic film, “The Blue Angel."
A set of political songs by Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) on Bertholt Brecht texts deals with war, economic justice, and the rising tide of fascism. Another song mocks Hitler by alluding to the failure of an enemy from ancient Jewish history, Haman, the Persian antagonist of the Purim story.
The program concludes with songs in Hebrew celebrating Jewish pioneer life in pre-statehood Israel. These feature “postcard songs," musical settings by prominent composers to contemporary poetry written by settlers in the Holy Land.
Among the many recorded premieres in this section are two songs each by Kurt Weill (1900-1950) and Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), and songs by Paul Dessau (1894-1979) and Stefan Wolpe (1902-1972).
Other widely known composers making appearances are Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), with some fully tonal, late Romantic settings for modernist poetry, Irving Berlin (1888-1989), and Aaron Copland (1900-1990).
Cantors Stewart Figa and Deborah Bard sing the more theatrical, vaudevillian, character-based pieces. Figa has performed in Yiddish Theater Productions in New York, where he worked with great artists of the Yiddish stage. He sang the classic Yiddish song “Rumania, Rumania" on the award-winning CBS-TV series Brooklyn Bridge. The Northwestern University theater graduate serves as cantor at West Suburban Temple Har Zion in River Forest, Ill.
A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and Hebrew Union College's School of Sacred Music, Ms. Bard has sung roles in professional theater in Chicago and New York. Her Holiday Songs Kids Love to Sing is a best-selling recording of Jewish music for children. She serves as cantor and music director at the historic K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Temple in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood.
Ms. Bentley, who sings the more classically styled art songs on the program, has performed with every prominent contemporary music ensemble in Chicago. In May 2001, she sang at Carnegie Hall in Pierre Boulez's “Marteau Sans Maître," conducted by Boulez. The New York Times praised her “rich sound, deep expressivity, and an uncanny sense of pitch."
The New Budapest Orpheum Society is a Chicago-based collective whose artistic director, Philip V. Bohlman, a distinguished University of Chicago ethnomusicologist, unearthed much of the repertoire on the CD. Professor Bohlman, who wrote the booklet notes, is the author of the recently released book, “World Music: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2002).
As professor of music and Jewish studies at the university, Bohlman's fieldwork has taken him to Jewish communities in central and eastern Europe. It was his research there and in Israel that yielded many of the songs heard on “Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano."
Other ensemble members are University of Chicago-based, Russian-born arranger and pianist Ilya Levinson, a graduate of the Moscow State Conservatory, whose music has been recorded by the Maxwell Street Klezmer band on the Shanachie label; Bulgarian-born violinist Peter Blagoev, who, since emigrating to the U.S. in 1993, has performed as soloist with many orchestras in the Chicago area; bassist Stewart Miller, who toured with the Glen Miller Orchestra and has recorded with several high-profile Chicago jazz artists; percussionist Hank Tausend, who performs regularly with several regional orchestras and with jazz and dance bands such as Airflow Deluxe and Woody Allen's Band in New York; and flutist Elizabeth Ko, a soloist at the 1997 National Flute Association convention and winner of the 1994 University of Chicago Concerto Competition.
Jon Steinhagen, who penned American lyrics for the songs from the Yiddish, German and German dialect, and Hebrew originals, has received two Joseph Jefferson Citations and three After Dark Awards for his musical theater work since 1995. Cedille Records (pronounced say-DEE), dedicated to showcasing Chicago's most noteworthy classical artists, is an arm of the nonprofit Chicago Classical Recording Foundation.
New Budapest Orpheum Society - Jewish Cabaret and Political Songs 1900-1945
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