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Previously unknown works by Paul von Klenau recorded by Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Rehearsal on Klenau's Piano Concerto (Photo: Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Aloysius Lim)

Previously unknown works by Paul von Klenau recorded by Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Klenau was a controversial figure in Danish music life who has been more or less forgotten after his death. On 12 May a new album will be released, presenting world premiere recordings of three orchestral works.

New release
19 April 2023

Paul von Klenau (1883-1946) was a controversial figure in Danish music life. He produced works, nearly manically, until his passing, but then he and his music disappeared from view in a kind of collective amnesia.

At the age of 19 he travelled to Germany, where he settled there, establishing a successful career as a conductor and composer. During these years he was able to navigate his way through a Nazi Germany where the boundaries between being inside or outside in relation to the prevailing ideology and artistic taste were blurred. Klenau gave expression to views that aligned with those of the Nazis, though he never
actually joined the party.

On 12 May a new album is released, presenting af glimpse of Klenau's vast production and showcasing his mastery of both tonal and atonal
sonorities and his distinctive introspective style.

Klenau in Singapore

Concertos · Symphony No. 8 presents world premiere recordings of Klenau's Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto and 8th symphony. The works were all found amongst his surviving papers in 2005 and none of them were performed during his lifetime.

The album is recorded by Singapore Symphony Orchestra, who also gave the first performance of Klenau's Piano Concerto and Symphony No. 8. 

Chief conductor Hans Graf says of working with the previously unknown music: "It should be the start of a project to point our interest a little bit more towards Mr. von Klenau, who is an unrightfully forgotten composer like many others, to be really unearthed and discovered for our daily use, because we do too much of the same."

Late Romantic style and Baroque exercises

The Piano Concerto is built upon Klenau's key determined twelve tone system, but comes across as classical with elements familiar in tonally
based music . A personal work, which plays out his situation during the Second World War when he returned to Copenhagen and the Danish musical scene reacted with reserve to his return.

The Violin Concerto is also a twelve tone work according to Klenau himself, but its musical expression is more late Romantic in style, comparable to works by Richard Strauss and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

The Symphony No. 8 is written "in the old style": light, cheerful and playful. The symphony is a kind of exercise in the style of the old Baroque and Viennese Classical master and was maybe just as much an exercise for his own pleasure, as he didn't try to have it performed or published, but there is much more in the music than just a stylistic exercise.

Single out now

You can already now listen to a single from the album, that is the second movement from Klenau's Violin Concerto with the young virtuoso violinist Ziyu He as solist. In the slow, melancholic and storytelling movement, the solo violin poetically floats above the orchestra. Listen to the single here.

Get to know Klenau better with previous releases and the biography by Steen Chr. Steensen, who also contributed with liner notes to the new album.
  • Paul von Klenau

    Koncerter · Symfoni nr. 8

  • Paul von Klenau

    Symphony No. 9

  • Paul von Klenau

    String Quartets nos. 1, 2 and 3

  • Paul von Klenau

    Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornetts Christoph Rilke

  • Paul von Klenau, Steen Chr. Steensen

    Danske Komponister – Paul von Klenau

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