A real and important discovery. The case of Ignace Strasfogel (1909-94) is very similar to that of Berthold Goldschmidt; indeed they must at one stage have known each other, since both were in Schreker’s composition class in Berlin in the 1920s. Strasfogel, however, was six years younger than Goldschmidt and had hardly begun making his way as a composer (though very promisingly: his Second Piano Sonata won the Mendelssohn Prize) when he was forced to leave Germany in 1933. In New York he made a successful career as a pianist (he was Lauritz Melchior’s accompanist) and conductor, and took up composing again in 1940. No performances followed, however, and he abandoned composition again until his old age. His career, therefore, is divided by silences into three ‘periods’, all of them represented here and with a strong and consistent creative personality evident in them all.
That the Mendelssohn Prize jury was impressed by Strasfogel’s Second Sonata is not surprising, but what would they have said if he had sent them his First? It is a remarkably accomplished piece, breathtakingly so if you consider that it was completed before his 16th birthday. It is tonally adventurous but at the same time aware of and respectful to tradition: his angular counterpoint (including a brief fugal section) is delicate rather than bony, the slow movement builds dramatically over a four-note ‘ground bass’ and the capricious finale, free but never atonal, has a delightful humour to it. Even so, the Second Sonata, from a year later, is still better: the slow movement, again over a repeated ground, has an impressive grave lyricism, the many moods of the opening movement are built into an admirably strong unity and the variation finale concludes with a passacaglia of some grandeur. Here, too, humour is apparent, and a touch of it seasons the otherwise elegant (and eloquent) counterpoint of the Preludio fugato from 1946, during Strasfogel’s ‘second period’.
His late phase is represented by the very short Second Scherzo (rather gently lyrical, despite its title) and the beautiful but enigmatic Dear Men and Women. Described in the notes as a song it is in fact an extended (14-minute) chamber cantata of subtle expressiveness and real distinction, an old man’s moving reflections on the past and those of whom death has robbed him. Alas the text, which obviously meant a great deal to Strasfogel, cannot be printed for copyright reasons. All I can tell you (Decca do not) is that the words are by the American poet John Hall Wheelock (1886-1978) and that they appear in three of his published collections as well as in a number of more recent anthologies. Despite Martin Bruns’s best efforts (he is Swiss, but trained at Juilliard) his diction gives only a general idea of the poem’s gist. A great pity: apparently most of Strasfogel’s late works are songs, and on this evidence they urgently need investigating. Bruns, however, sings very well, and Kolja Lessing’s advocacy of Strasfogel’s piano music is eloquent. The excellent recording has a pleasing touch of reverberance.'