Dancing on a Volcano album review – a glorious technicolour snapshot of pre-war musical Germany

From Hindemith’s jazz-age energy to Schoenberg’s existential angst, and Kurt Weill’s biting satire to Korngold’s neo-Romanticism, this lively recording is a perfect example of the kind of music the Nazis couldn’t abide.

If this live recording from Ensemble Modern and HK Gruber represents an eclectic snapshot of musical Germany between 1920 and 1933, it’s also a perfect example of the kind of thing the Nazis couldn’t abide. “Too modern, too jazzy, too Jewish,” they cried. No surprise then that all four composers ultimately wound up in the United States.

Premiered in 1922, Hindemith’s Kammermusik No 1 was condemned by one critic as having “a lewdness and frivolity only possible for a very special kind of composer”. Gruber embraces its neo-classical spikiness and jazz-age energy in a performance of almost cartoonish glee. Korngold, as epitomised by his 1920 music for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, is Hindemith’s polar opposite. In a lively reading, Gruber leavens the composer’s Viennese neo-Romanticism with a pinch of acerbic wit.

Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene, which premiered under Klemperer in 1930, is eight minutes of existential angst. Johannes Schöllhorn’s lean-textured 1993 chamber version is mined for every dissonant colour.

The jewel in the crown is Gruber and Christian Muthspiel’s Kurt Weill Foundation-sanctioned arrangement of The Seven Deadly Sins. Wallis Giunta is more opera diva than Weimar chanteuse but there’s no shortage of bite in her voice, while Amarcord’s male quartet kvetch and wheedle as her rapacious family. Gruber’s razor-sharp yet flexible interpretation drips idiomatic venom.

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