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Roaring Twenties
Benjamin Britten - Aaron Copland - George Gershwin - Kurt Weill - Haven Gillespie - Seymour Simons - Richard Whiting - Vincento Scotto

Roaring Twenties

Calefax / Cora Burggraaf

Label: Challenge Classics
Format: SACD
Barcode: 0608917265729
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Catalog number: CC 72657
Releasedate: 26-09-14
It is a century ago that World War I swept across the European continent, a massacre of hitherto unheard-of scope and savagery. The United States of America, still a young nation, suffered relatively little. The economy did not suffer – on the contrary, the US weapons industry had made a substantial contribution and reaped the profits. Dance halls and cinemas offered entertainment outside the home, and the airwaves were filled with jazz. The ‘Roaring Twenties’ were about to unfold. Slowly but surely this new lifestyle made its way to the rehabilitating European continent, reluctantly at first, but by the mid-twenties Paris was abuzz with‘les années folles’. Berlin and London were the other European centers to enthusiastically embrace the American style. Not everyone was so keen: Europeans were not able to shake off the terrible memories of the trenches and chemical warfare, and there were calls for old-fashioned decorum and warnings against decadence. ‘Dancing on the edge’, it was called. The arts, too, were ambivalent.
 
  • an enthralling journey through the cultured but popular music of 1920s
  • music by young lions as Weill, Gershwin and Britten, representatives of the most innovative attempt to connect classical music and popular song
  • bold and effective arrangements for vioce and reed quintet by Calefax, one of the most original and challenging European young ensemble
Calefax and Cora Burggraaf have worked together for many years. Their joint project The Roaring Twenties was so successful that they decided it should be recorded on CD. The disc opens with the dance that epitomized the twenties: the Charleston. Breezin’ along with the breeze is a carefree ode to freedom and nature, and thanks its popularity to the singer/actress Josephine Baker. The poet W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten had a tempestuous love affair that resulted in numerous artistic collaborations, including the Cabaret Songs. The texts are the fruits of Auden’s wild time in Berlin in the early thirties. If there is but one piece of music that symbolizes interbellum Berlin, then it is Die Dreigroschenoper by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill. This is ‘dancing on the edge’ at its best. The opera – or, rather, the musical – is an ode to down-andouts, thieves, thugs, con men and whores. George Gershwin’s trip to Europe and sojourn in Paris had a significant impact on his career. He met Kurt Weill in Berlin and countless Parisian artists. More importantly, however, was his growing awareness of his unique, American and jazz-influenced style. In An American in Paris Gershwin seems to be looking for a meaningful synthesis of his own style and his newfound knowledge of classical form and composition. It is more complex and ‘classical’ than his earlier works; the autobiographical work sketches the awe-struck impressions of an American ambling through the chaotic Paris of the 1920s.