A year after his death, Krenek's music is being revived. I enthusiastically welcomed Geoffrey Douglas Madge's first two volumes of the piano music recorded in collaboration with the composer himself—the sonatas, also on Koch (6/92). And the recording of Lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae from the Netherlands Chamber Choir on Globe (10/92) is a revelation. This is not all, since the opera Jonny spielt auf, so much a document of the late 1920s, is reviewed on page xxx. In these pluralist times we may recognize an image of ourselves and our century in Krenek's barometric contradictions and vacillations of style.
Madge, the enterprising Australian pianist who is now based in Amsterdam, worked closely with Krenek in the last few years of his life and he really makes the most of what this music offers in idiomatic piano writing and range of expression. This new CD complements the sonatas with further works some of which are no less substantial—both the Toccata and Chaconne and the 12 Variations last over 20 minutes. The first is freely atonal and the second serial, but both convey Krenek's personality. His range is extended further with the George Washington Variations (1950), based on a simple march in G major. Krenek has been unjustly attacked for symbolizing the kind of imported European influence which kept American composers away from their own heritage. Far from it. Here he is, in the Washington Variations, vividly and affectionately celebrating the American scene as an enthusiastic immigrant in the tradition of Anthony Philip Heinrich, who was known as ''the Beethoven of Kentucky'' in the early nineteenth century.
Krenek's character pieces are effective too. His Little Suite (a postscript to the 1922 Toccata and Chaconne) is a compact set of miniatures, starting with an Allemande and ending with a Foxtrot. The latest work, Echoes from Austria (1958), looks back nostalgically at Krenek's own Viennese background. The recording of the piano is slightly bright at times, but always clean. The whole venture is an example of a performer's advocacy in the best possible way with results of great documentary value.'