Herman D. Koppel Edition, Vol. 3: Piano Suites

Land of Childhood

By Christian Westergaard and Esben Tange

Life and music were closely intertwined for Herman D. Koppel. He grew up in a tradition-rooted Jewish family with strong values and notions, where the individual’s needs took a back seat. Therefore, it led to a deep family crisis when Herman, the firstborn, married Edel Vibeke Bruun, who was not Jewish, at the age of 27. For several years, there was a rift between Herman and his parents. Nevertheless, he remained a family man for whom togetherness with – and support for – his closest relations was of great importance. And this also applied when it came to music.

Several of Koppel’s works are composed with close family members in mind. Many of these works have an educational purpose, such as the 10 Piano Pieces, Op. 20 (1933), written for his 11-year-old sister Anna – which also became the focal point of his grandson Benjamin Koppel’s bestselling book Annas sang (Anna’s Song) (2022). This also applies to the 50 Short Piano Pieces, Op. 99 (1977) and 26 Small Piano Pieces, Op. 111 (1983-84), largely composed with Koppel’s 12 grandchildren in mind.

Koppel’s interest in pedagogy followed him throughout his life and was animated by Carl Nielsen, who in 1929 urged contemporary composers to write accessible music for educational purposes. Already the following year, he had a couple of short pentatonic piano pieces printed in the publication Vor tids børnemusik (Children’s Music of Our Time). This went hand-in-hand with Koppel’s work as a piano teacher.

Private students and teaching at the Danish Institute for Visual Impairment in Copenhagen provided an important income as a newly graduated pianist in the 1930s, and already in 1936 Herman D. Koppel began teaching at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. At times, he had aspiring pianists living in his home, which from the late 1940s until 1969 was an apartment in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen.

In addition to Carl Nielsen, Béla Bartók was a significant inspiration. This is evident in the short pedagogical pieces, where Bartók’s 153 piano pieces entitled Mikrokosmos (1926–39), form a monument of progressive difficulty for educational use. Similarly, the Piano Piece, Op. 7 (1930), and the Suite for Piano, Op. 21 (1934), are both effective concert hall music characterised by assertive rhythms in the style of Bartók, which Koppel experienced firsthand when Bartók played his piano sonata in Copenhagen in 1929.

Gammel dans (Old Dance) (1924) holds a special significance in Herman D. Koppel’s life. In this merry piece, there is a whiff of the folk music that would later come to play an important role for Koppel, and we are close to the classical sonatina style that he knew inside out as a diligent piano student in his boyhood years.

When Koppel auditioned for the Royal Danish Academy of Music as a 17-year-old in 1925, he played the piece Gammel dans. Carl Nielsen was on the admission committee, and after hearing the little piece, he reportedly exclaimed: ‘You have an excellent sense of form, Mr. Koppel!’ Herman D. Koppel was then admitted to the conservatory with the remark ‘exceptionally talented and promising’.

The 10 Piano Pieces, Op. 20, are small musical glimpses with a twinkle in their eye. Here, Koppel celebrates simplicity by using melodies that often span only five notes. We are in a confined world where the music floats and plays like in the land of childhood that his younger sister Anna inhabited when the music was created. At the same time, there are new tones that were dubbed ‘musical functionalism’ and were part of a wave of ‘utility music’ composed around 1930.

Just as in architecture, all external ornamentation was stripped away, leaving only the bare framework. In the instances where Koppel does break the pattern and lets a single tone stand out, the effect is all the greater. This is the case, for example, toward the end of the vitally dancing second piece ‘Giocoso’ and part way through the following ‘Dolente’, where a magical light is suddenly cast over music that otherwise seems to be going in circles. In the final piece, a theme with variations, Koppel breaks out of the constraints. With an insistent rhythmic pounding motive, it is playful music that dwells on gently singing dissonances before running rampant. A window onto a new world beyond childhood.

In three movements from the 26 Small Piano Pieces, Op. 111 (1983–84), we meet Koppel as an elderly man well into his 70s. The hovering lightness is intact, but now in a more narrative, atonal style marked by poetry and reflection.

In the two movements ‘En pige synger’ (A Girl Sings) and ‘En dreng synger samme sang’ (A Boy Sings the Same Song), simplicity is no longer the goal. We are once again visiting the land of childhood, but with a dreamy musical language rich in nuances, the music resonates with a life lived.

When Koppel composed Piece for Piano, Op. 7, in late 1930, he had earlier that year debuted as a pianist from the Royal Danish Academy of Music and was now embarking on a career as a concert pianist. With an insistent rhythmic energy from the very first note, it is the raw forces of music that are cultivated, akin to Bartok’s Allegro barbaro (1911), which Koppel often performed in concerts. With a steady marching rhythm and chords hammered on the keys again and again, Koppel here cultivates a virtuoso style perfectly suited to thrill a concert audience, and which he fully unleashed when he used this very music toward the end of his Piano Concerto No. 1.

With the Suite for Piano, Op. 21 (1934), Koppel created a radically new work where the music of the time is connected with ancient cultures’ veneration of the ritual and ecstatic. During a study stay in Paris, he experienced Balinese gamelan music, inspiring him in the final movement of the suite to write music where the piano is treated like a percussion instrument. The notes are hammered out as if a drumroll, and the music is irresistible. In contrast, the middle second movement is delicate and flowing, and with constant repetitions, time is suspended, offering a glimpse into eternity before a single powerful chord ends it all.

With the piano suite, Koppel truly stepped onto the international stage as a composer, and the suite was published, printed and performed abroad. But it was music that divided opinions. The music critic Povl Hamburger described the piano suite in a column in Politiken as ‘one of the most typical examples of the decay of contemporary music – soulless rhythmic music from start to finish.’

The 50 Short Piano Pieces, Op. 99 (1977), occupy a special status among Koppel’s works. The year before, his wife Edel Vibeke passed away, and after more than 40 years of marriage, Herman was now alone. But through 50 Short Piano Pieces, which Koppel composed for his grandchildren, he forged new bonds with the large family that had grown up around him. Once again, as in his youth, he had written music with an educational purpose. In a simple aphoristic style, he introduced the new music and special piano techniques challenging for young musicians.

In addition, the 50 Short Piano Pieces can be seen as a reference catalogue to important aspects of Herman D. Koppel’s life. With ‘Små klokker’ (Small Bells) and ‘Store klokker’ (Large Bells) there is a connection back to the magical percussion world that he encountered in his youth in 1930s Paris. In the hopeful ‘Herren er min hyrde’ (The Lord is My Shepherd) the religious strings are struck that took hold of Koppel in the time after World War II. With ‘Sorg’ (Sorrow) and the final piece ‘Vi mødes igen’ (We Meet Again), he comes very close to the difficult life situation he was in at the time. At the same time, deeply personal and accessible to everyone.