THE TIMES:
“Only when fighting, even when losing, does life bring joy”: such lines bring a gulp to the throat in this programme of music from Jewish composers banned or gassed by the Nazis. Sheridan’s soprano doesn’t do voluptuousness, nor crisp German enunciation, but she has heart and passion, which warms the more testing selections by Ullmann and Schulhoff. Pavel Haas’s Seven Folk Songs are the best discovery.
Geoff Brown

AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE:
The names of Franz Shreker, Erwin Schulhoff and Pavel Haas are far from familiar to the general public. Since she stumbled on their music in the early 1980s while studying at the Opera Studio in Hamburg, English soprano Judith Sheridan has been devoted to studying and performing songs of Jewish composers who were banned in Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Sheridan, whose father was one of the last Jewish students to study at Hamburg University before the Nazi takeover, has a personal commitment to this music.

Several of these composers were prisoners at Terezin (Theresienstadt), the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia created by Hitler to give a false impression of Nazi tolerance toward Jews. For a time the musical life of Terezin was very rich, given the large number of Jewish musicians imprisoned there, until most of the prisoners were sent to their death at Auschwitz.

Sheridan’s light lyric voice is sweet and she sings with conviction. She is best when she sings softly; at louder dynamic levels she tends to sound shrill and has to strain for some top notes, and she is challenged by the expressionist writing in Victor Ullmann’s Five Love Songs by Ricarda Huch with its angular intervals. The accompaniment is excellent, and it is well recorded in the warm acoustic of the Jacqueline du Pre Building at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. German texts and English translations are supplied, but the text for the one song in English (Berthold Goldschmidt’s setting of Rupert Brooke’s “Clouds”) is not included. Sheridan’s extensive and informative notes on these composers and the effect of the Holocaust on musicians offers a grim reminder of the heinous depths humanity can sink to.

The songs are all worth hearing, particularly Unvergänglichkeit, Erich Korngold’s 1934 set of five songs, and all are thoroughly in the German tradition. It is simply musical justice that this music should be heard by a wider audience.
R. Moore

THE MACCABEAN (AUSTRALIA):
As is well known, during the Hitler years, the music of Jewish composers was banned. The works of Mendelssohn, Offenbach, Meyerbeer, and Alkan, for instance, could not be performed. And for Jewish composers living under the Third Reich, there were very real physical dangers. Musicians such as Erich Korngold in Hollywood were out of the reach of the Nazis although their music could not be played in Germany. But a number of leading composers who were living in Germany and Czechoslovakia at the time were literally in peril of their lives, even those who did not consider themselves Jewish and who would not have been considered Jewish in a halachic sense.

Franz Schreker is a case in point. He was born in Monaco in 1878 to a Hungarian father who was a photographer to the Austro Hungarian Royal Court. His ancestry is unclear. Franz thought his father might have been Jewish but it is not certain whether this was the case; he was never able to prove this one way or another. His mother was Catholic and Franz was brought up as such.

A brilliant musician, Schreker was appointed director of the prestigious Berlin Musikhochschule in 1920. His pupils included conductors Horenstein, Rodzinski and Schmidt-Isserstedt. He was dismissed in 1933 due to be the race laws. He died of a heart attack in 1934, almost certainly as a result of stress. He was 56 years old.

Victor Ullman's parents, both born Jewish, had converted to Catholicism and felt themselves completely assimilated. This cut no ice with the Nazis and Ullman was transported to Theresienstadt where he produced a remarkable amount of fine music before being sent to Auschwitz where he died in 1944. Czech-born Pavel Haas also died in Auschwitz. Earlier, in Theresienstadt, Haas wrote prolifically but only three of the works survive, one-Study for Strings-featuring in a Nazi propaganda movie intended to pull the wool over the eyes of the cup Red Cross.

Berthold Goldschmidt had a remarkable survival. After a brutal Gestapo Inquisition, he fled Berlin, where he had a significant reputation as an opera composer, and came to London where he died in 1996 at the ripe age of 93 years. For years, Goldschmidt lived in obscurity, his music considered old-fashioned until rediscovered, as it were, by Sir Simon Rattle and Trinity College of Music, London.

Erwin Schulhoff, as a mere 7-year-old, so impressed Dvorak that he urged the child's family to provide him with the best music education possible. They certainly did that; his teachers included Max Reger and Debussy. Schulhoff, incidentally, became a passionate socialist, so much so that he set the Communist manifesto to music in the form of a cantata! He died of malnutrition and typhus in Wulzbourg camp in 1942.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg. The musicians referred to here were all high-profile figures, but that prominence did nothing to save those in the clutches of the Nazis including Jewish instrumentalists in prestigious orchestras such as the Vienna Philharmonic (at least two of its members died in concentration camps). How much more vulnerable, then, were those hundreds of musicians in far humbler jobs: music teachers in schools throughout the Reich, for instance, all members of the many orchestras throughout the country playing in provincial opera houses. In Viktor Klemperer's heart-rending diary about the years he spent in Dresden as a Jew married to an Aryan in the Hitler years, he writes of the frightful consequences to both his wife and himself should it have become known that she was teaching an aryan child to play the piano.

Of course, it is not only Jewish musicians whose lives were wrecked by these laws; she was working in post offices, say, or museums and libraries, also found themselves on the street.

In Forbidden Voices, Judith Sheridan has done wonders in bringing together and recording 33 songs by composers whose music was banned by the Nazis. Listening to these recordings - and the seriousness of purpose brought to the performances is undeniable - one is left with the impression that it is Sheridan's work as a music historian that will be recognized as her major contribution to what is still one of the least known aspects of the Holocaust. Sheridan's detailed notes on the subject make fascinating and disturbing reading.
Neville Cohn

LIVERPOOL DAILY POST:
Even before Hitler came to power in 1933, the situation was becoming uncomfortable for Jewish composers in Germany. During the time of the Weimar republic, after the Greta War, the liberalising of thought and ideas, epitomised by the Berlin Cabaret scene, was producing a backlash against the advancing styles of artists like Schoenberg in favour of more traditional German music.

As a result, the ground was already fertile when the new Chancellor set out the cultural ground which reflected his personal tastes. Wagner and Beethoven were in, anything modern or discordant was out, and the Jewish school was excluded for racial reasons. To begin with, performances were made difficult, but it took some time for Jewish musicians to be eased out of the orchestras because there were few of their ability to replace them. Through the 1930s, many left the country for Austria and Czechoslovakia, where events caught up with them.

The soprano, Judith Sheridan, has made a special study of the subject and writes an excellent 17-page essay, for a new compact disc released on the Divine Art label. She is an ex-student of the Royal Northern College of Music and Lancaster University and spent more than a decade singing leading roles in German opera houses. It was hearing a performance of Zemlinsky’s opera, The Dwarf, in Hamburg, that fired her interest in Entartete Kunst – Degenerate Art as the Nazis called it.

Now she gives a song recital, with pianist Craig Combs, entitled Forbidden Voices. Some of the composers on this disc left Germany in time. Erich Korngold, whose five songs are here, followed great success in Europe with a film music career in Hollywood, although it is only in recent years that his serious work has once again been appreciated. Berthold Goldschmidt failed to have his early success recognised by the musical establishment when he arrived in Britain, and he had to wait until nearly his 90th year before emerging from a hard-working life to receive his due, particularly from Simon Rattle, and found his work being recorded.

Franz Schreker, a Catholic with a tenuous Jewish ancestry, was so harassed that he died from a heart attack in 1934. Pavel Haas, who died in Auschwitz, was a Moravian born in Brno and was influenced by folk music and the teachings of Janacek. Something evident from the seven songs recorded here. His countryman, Viktor Ullmann, also died in Auschwitz and, like Haas, spent time in the famous Teretzin camp which fostered a lively musical life, on which the Nazis capitalised for propaganda purposes.

Finally, we have Prague-born Erwin Schulhoff, an anti-establishment eccentric, who joined the Communist party and became a Russian citizen to try to avoid his fate, only to be caught by the invasion of Russia, and died from pneumonia in a camp.

A sad chapter of German history is brought to light by this song recital, which includes texts and translations.
Peter Spaull

GRAMOPHONE:
A modest affair recorded in the intimate acoustic of the recital room of an Oxford College, this copiously annotated collection is worlds away from Decca’s grandiose “Entartete Musik” projects of the 1990s. As Judith Sheridan explains,her programme contains songs by a diverse group of musicians who would not necessarily have considered themselves culturally “Jewish” until their ethnicity became an issue. Ullman and Haas died at Auschwitz within days of each other in 1944.

We remain in the echt German world of Brahms and Strauss for the early Schreker songs, migrate to France for one of the Schulhoff’s many stylistic experiments and end up in Pavel Haas’s escapist, Janacek-derived Eden. These Seven songs in Folk Style (1940) have been recorded before but much of this material will be new to the potential buyers. Though the soprano sounds strained by some of the high tessitura of the writing (the dourly expressionistic Ullmann settings in particular are something of an ordeal), it helps that she is sympathetically accompanied.

How good is the music? Perhaps the inclusion of Korngold’s Unverganglichkeit is instructive. Its mode of address may lack originality yet there is much to be said for lush romanticism when it allows for a grateful vocal line. Incidentally, while you won’t find the words of Rupert Brooke’s Clouds, as set by the late Berthold Goldschmidt, all the relevant German – Language texts are supplied with translations.
David Gutman

CLASSIC FM MAGAZINE:
Driven by sensitive historical awareness, this disc tells of past tragedy and future hope. Not always beautifully sung, but never wanting soul. ××××
Unnamed reviewer

MUSICWEB:
Perhaps you remember Decca’s wonderful “Entartete Musik” series which started in the early 1990s, music which was banned by the Nazis. You may also recall the series on Koch “The Terezin Music Anthology”. Even before that Channel Classics produced a series of discs “Chamber Music from Theresienstadt”. Since then there have been more discoveries on other labels but before circa 1990 this music was unknown to the general public. The emphasis of this renaissance has often throughout this period been on the chamber works and sometimes on the orchestral music. At last the songs are given an opportunity. Amongst the composers who are not represented on this CD one could add Gideon Klein, Rudolf Karel and Hans Krasa, all of them annihilated under the Nazis. All were youngish men whose careers were just about to take off and all had Jewish ancestry. Some, like Erich Korngold or Berthold Goldschmidt escaped to America or Britain or elsewhere after 1933. I have seen a film of Pavel Haas conducting his Study for Strings at Theresienstadt made by Nazi propagandists for the Red Cross no less, to show how well they were treating their artists in the ‘camps’. One week or so after the film was made, Haas and many other musicians were dead.

The booklet has one of the best essays on the musical background to the works that I have read as well as extensive biographies on the composers. Texts of all of the songs are provided except that is for Goldschmidt’s first song ‘Clouds’ with words by Rupert Brooke written in 1950 which is obviously in English; Goldschmidt was living in London by then. Some of these composers had been pupils of Janacek, like Pavel Haas whose ‘Songs in a folk style’ are some of the most delightful pieces on the disc. Some knew Bartok or had attended lectures by Hindemith. Ullmann had been a pupil of Schoenberg. That is the starting point of his harmonic language but the melodic and rhythmic language of folk melody and folk dance are often also an influence.

So what can we say of this fascinating collection of songs? I mentioned Goldschmidt. He had been a student of Schreker and it’s true to say that throughout his career he hardly expanded on his teacher’s language. I have come to know his music quite well and feel that his earlier pre-war stuff has more to say than anything post-war. The songs are attractive and subtle but have little in them that is memorable. Also, as they are rather short, they are not easily programmable.

Schreker’s songs open the disc. There are eight of them, settings of Jul Sturm, E. Sherenberg and Dora Leen which was a pseudonym for Dora Pollock, a Jewish poetess. They do not represent the composer as you might know him, that is through the banned opera ‘Der Ferne Klang’ (completed in 1910) and the ‘Chamber Symphony’ (!916). Although charming and each song is well contrasted they remain mostly derivative of Pfitzner and Loewe, romantic and conservative composers in vogue at the time.

Erwin Schulhoff is a fascinating figure, You may know him as a brilliant composer of chamber music. His songs bring to the fore the exceptional pianism of Craig Combs. These inhabit an ambiguous harmonic language; Debussy crossed with Alban Berg. It is here and in the accompaniment to Haas’s songs that the pianist carries the most weight. Indeed the Haas songs feel as if they are piano studies with vocal embellishment, Schulhoff has a more balanced and individual approach. He takes five poems which he may well have written himself. They are expressionist and elusive: ‘Pain lies irksome/With plenty fingers it gropes for the soul’.

Korngold’s songs are memorable, romantic, tuneful and probably come off the best on the disc. Viktor Ullmann’s songs are also expressionist in nature. In five poems by the versatile authoress Ricard Huch the language of Ullmann’s songs may remind you of late Strauss or even Wolf. They are moving but I’m not sure if Judith Sheridan is quite the right singer for them, Which brings me neatly to the performance as a whole.

Judith Sheridan is very committed to this project, hence her vast and superbly presented notes, with her list of thank-yous on the back of the CD and her scrupulous choice of pieces and careful diction. However I left the CD wishing the whole recital to be performed again but by someone else. Some songs, like Ullmann’s need a real soprano yet he uses the lower register also. Sheridan does not quite fit the bill. Her upper register does not convince although she has a lovely pianissimo on top Gs but she evaporates into a different voice in the lower reaches, with too much vibrato for my taste anyway. Craig Combs is sympathetic and extremely competent. His use of pedal is discreet and he is supportive and careful with dynamics. No praise is too high for his contribution. All in all an interesting collection, recorded in a friendly, domestic acoustic but not music to rattle anyone’s cage or be picked up by other singers as a result of this CD.
Gary Higginson