MUSIC REVIEW : A Beguiling, Belated Salute to Ernst Krenek

Ernst Krenek--one of the most influential, most prolific, most versatile and most confounding composers of the 20th Century--turned 90 last year.

He was appropriately feted throughout Europe, even in his native Vienna. The milestone earned little notice, however, in Southern California, where Krenek has lived since 1947. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, as has been its historical habit, looked the other way.

This week, in connection with its survey of music that the Nazis labeled “degenerate,” the orchestra is trying to make amends, of sorts. On Thursday, Lawrence Foster will conduct Krenek’s “Symphonic Elegy” of 1946 on a program that also includes works by such disparate victims of the Third Reich as Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Kurt Weill and Paul Hindemith.

When first informed of the plan a year ago, Krenek expressed some characteristic, understandable irritation. Never celebrated as a diplomat, he declared that the salute would have been more appropriate in 1990.

“I fail to see,” he added in a letter to the administration, “what my 90th birthday has to do with ‘entartete Kunst’ (degenerate art). If I should be associated therewith at all, it would seem to be more logical to select a work from the early ‘20s . . . instead of the ‘Symphonic Elegy’ which I wrote in this country after that obnoxious concept had long become obsolete.”

Monday night, as part of the adventurous Green Umbrella series at the Japan America Theatre and in conjunction with the local “Entartete Kunst” retrospective, the Philharmonic mustered a smaller-scaled but more extensive tribute focusing on Krenek alone. It actually included two pieces written before 1931.

Krenek might have enjoyed the belated recognition from Los Angeles’ loftiest musical Establishment. Illness and the infirmities of age, unfortunately, kept him at home in Palm Springs.

He missed a taut little concert notable for eclectic revelations and bright, obviously dedicated performances. The New Music Group under David Alan Miller, plus assorted guests, paid appreciative attention to the prophet without much honor in his adopted land.

The evening began with “Arc of Life,” Opus 234, a cycle of 12 symphonic miniatures written in 1981. Gerard Schwarz and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra performed the world premiere in Palm Springs nine years ago.

These, essentially, are tiny, exquisitely crafted, inter-connected mood pieces--eloquently romantic in effect, stubbornly progressive in structure. Miller and an ensemble of Philharmonic virtuosos clearly savored the rhythmic propulsion as well as expressive detail.

Next, and certainly more degenerate by Goebbelsian standards, was “Durch die Nacht” (1931), an almost sentimental song cycle that sometimes stretches the arching cantilena toward Sprechgesang and the harmony toward atonality. It was performed here, as at the Monday Evening Concert last week and at USC before that, by the soprano Anne Marie Ketchum and the USC Contemporary Music Ensemble under Donald Crockett.

The advantage of Ketchum’s radiant tone was compromised by slurpy articulation of Karl Krauss’ texts (vowels, yes; consonants, no). Crocket & Co. provided neat accompaniments that, in similar fashion, stressed prose rather than poetry.

A forbiddingly complex, typically ironic Krenek emerged after intermission in “The Dissembler,” a monologue for baritone and chamber orchestra completed in 1978. This rather delirious, multilingual scramble of philosophical explorations, narrative digressions, dramatic ironies and aesthetic in-jokes zigzags with cool bravura from style to style, quote to quote, context to context. It impresses as an intellectual exercise, even though it exerts only limited emotional compulsion.

Hector Vasquez sang the wide-ranging lines with more accuracy and point than vocal allure. He was deftly seconded by Miller and the Philharmonic ensemble.

A variation on this inspired band (including a chorus of mandolins, guitars and banjos) ended the evening with a happy jolt: the breezy, jazzy, funky yet sophisticated licks, riffs, giggles and croons of the “Kleine Symphonie” (1928).

Krenek, we were reminded, could be irresistibly charming when he was in the mood. He could be Weilly as well as wily.

Incidental intelligence: The elaborate souvenir program offers 62 pages of potentially interesting documentation on “Entartete Musik” (including a devastating bit of self-incrimination by an avid Nazi-sympathizer called Karl Boehm). The value of the research is diminished, unfortunately, by appallingly sloppy editing and apparently non-existent proofreading. Dates do not jibe from page to page, German texts are printed miles away from English translations, photo captions--if found--make little sense, misspellings abound.

There must be a better way.