In his old homeland of Germany, Samuel Adler was almost forgotten. But in recent times, his name has reappeared here and there in concert programs. Some of his works were performed at the Konzerthaus Berlin on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 2018, and a portrait programme about him from 2021 can be found in the Deutschlandfunk (DLF) media library. He was 93 years old at the time and had just completed his seventh symphony. He wrote it without a commission, „just for myself“. It was premiered in 2022 in Frankfurt/Oder by the Brandenburg State Orchestra, which has already released his Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 as well as a piano and violin concerto on CD (LINN Records).
Emigrated after the Reichspogromnight in 1938
Samuel Adler was born in Mannheim on March 4, 1928. In the DLF programme, he tells how he played the violin as a child and fled to the USA with his parents – his father was a cantor at the Mannheim synagogue – after the Reichspogromnight in 1938. Here he became a pupil of Paul Hindemith, Walter Piston and Aaron Copland, and as founder and conductor of the Symphony Orchestra of the Seventh U.S. Army, he toured Germany in ruins after World War II. In his new home, he taught at the universities of Texas and Rochester, as well as at the Juillard School, and composed over 500 works for all genres, including functional music for schools and liturgical music.
Energetic music
A CD produced in the USA and released in England sheds light on some of the stages of his chamber music work; the oldest work is the Violin Sonata from 1956, the latest the Tenth String Quartet, composed in 2014. Samuel Adler writes eloquent, worldly music, active, energetic and challenging for listening; subjective expression and constructive thinking complement each other in a convincing way. The musicologist Jürgen Thym, Adler’s former colleague emeritus from the Eastman School of Music at Rochester University, has written an informative booklet accompanying the event.
The CD documents an individual chapter of the fateful German-Jewish emigration. In addition, it gives a good insight into the very different American musical practice, whose European roots cannot be ignored here. The music of Samuel Adler would also be an interesting case for our performers in Germany.
Samuel Adler: Chamber and instrumental Music. Toccata Classics, TOCC 0624 (2021)
This text is an extended version of a CD review from the magazine MusikTexte No. 175/2022, p. 95.
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