This is the third recording of Krasa’s Brundibar to have come my way, such is the resurgence of interest in the work of the post-Janacek Czech-German school suppressed by the Nazis. Nor is it possible to be objective about the competing claims of the listed versions when each comes as part of a package in which the supporting texts are arguably as significant as the discs they accompany. Composed in 1938, Brundibar was subsequently reconstituted for performance in Theresienstadt. There it received as many as 55 airings, acquiring unlikely resonances and entering the group consciousness of incarcerated deportees in a way unimaginable to us today as we listen in comfort to what is after all a fairly slight children’s piece. This is the second recording to feature the Bambini di Praga and it is certainly more ‘authentic’ than Romantic Robot’s Czech TV performance. Karas on Channel Classics remains the coolest option, making more of the purely musical qualities of the score and its rakish references to other styles and happier times. The present issue overlaps with another valuable Channel Classics disc by the La Roche Quartet (1/93 – nla) and you may feel that the Israeli Group for New Music are stronger on emotional commitment than accurate tuning.
The Koch programme opens with the world premiere recording of the seemingly inconsequential Anna’s Song, but the point becomes clear when we hear how it provided the composer with the material for his Theme with Variations, an effective and touching piece which appeared on the Channel Classics collection. There is no sign of writing down in the exploratory Passacaglia and Fugue, completed as late as August 1944 and one of several such works by the composers of the ghetto; this is its first recording. The other premiere is of the Overture for small orchestra – spry, witty and stylistically closer to the children’s opera. The present CD constitutes the third volume of The Terezin Music Anthology, concerned as much to document the spiritual resistance of an isolated and terrorized community as to rehabilitate the scores themselves. Hence the booklet includes a wealth of documentary material – in rather small print.'