CHOOSE LIFE - a veritable journey. Myrna Herzog has recorded solo viol music from the 16th to 21st centuries

Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625)  Flowers in a Wooden Vessel

 

CHOOSE LIFE, played by Brazilian-born Myrna Herzog, is a new and comprehensive recording of solo music for the viola da gamba - comprehensive as it includes works from the 16th-, 17th-, 18th- and 21st centuries, covering from the earliest works for the instrument through to contemporary pieces written for Herzog, comprehensive as it includes works of composers from Central Europe, Brazil, Japan, Israel and Russia, comprehensive because the pieces are performed on six different viols - five historic and one modern. Dr. Myrna Herzog has referred to the recording as a "sort of multi-layered story or film" displaying "the instrument's singing and chordal capacity...and an array of techniques".

 

Of the splendid early solo repertoire for the viol - works from Italy, England, dance suites by French composers and German works - Herzog plays a representative selection. She opens with two pieces of Venetian musician Silvestro Ganassi, whose second treatise of two volumes (1542,1543) is highly informative on playing the viol - addressing the technicalities of playing the instrument and subtleties of expression, including guidance on the playing of passaggi (ornamentation). Herzog's playing of these pieces is of the kind that invites the musical text to dictate shapes, its phrasing and the pieces' underlying air of mystery, preparing the listener to experience the compositional perfection of several more finely-crafted miniatures to be heard here. Venetian composer Giovanni Bassano's Ricercata Quarta, another small jewel, boasts a challenging and unpredictable melodic course. Here, Herzog makes a point that the beautiful modern instrument built by Spanish luthier Luis Fernández (b.1956) does justice to such a work. As to Herzog's arrangement of "Terra donde me criei", a strophic, anonymous 16th century Portuguese piece, its plangent, vocal character is expounded by way of her individual colouring of vocal lines: “Land where I was raised Who took me away from you? Sad I will always live, Crying because I have lost you.”  The stylistically beautiful and moving "Fantasie" of Nicolas Hotman is followed by a "Sarabande et double'' by him. Known to be an expert player of the lute, theorbo and the viola da gamba, Hotman spent most of his career in France, referred to as the teacher of violist Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe. Of the latter, a celebrated master of the viola da gamba, credited with adding the seventh string on the bass viol, Herzog's playing of "Les Pleurs" (The Tears) is flexed, expressive and rich in "narrative".  As to the music of Sainte-Colombe le Fils, written in England, the bold, lively folk-like bourdon-based "Vielle" (this referring to  the vielle-à-roue or hurdy-gurdy) and played on the traditional English six-string viol, it nevertheless belongs to the French tradition in viola da gamba music, harking back to the style of his father and teacher. One of the recording's highlights is Herzog's personal reading of the younger Sainte-Colombe's mournful "Fantasie en Rondeau". Another student of Sainte-Colombe (the elder) was Marin Marais, represented here by two dances, Muzette I et II.

 

And to works by German-born composers. The recording includes two transcriptions Myrna Herzog has made of movements of solo works by J.S.Bach - the Sarabande from Violoncello Suite No.4 BWV 1010, played with majesty and elegance, highlighting the brighter and darker timbres of the viol, followed by her hearty reading of the "Gavotte en Rondeau" from Violin Partita No.3 BWV1006, this taken at a moderate speed in order to set off each gesture. Carl Friedrich Abel was a student at St. Thomas School, Leipzig, where he was taught by Bach, then to become one of the most renowned viola da gamba players of his day and composing important music for the instrument. A fashionable performer when the viola da gamba had become a rarity, Abel’s performances inspired a revival of interest among performers and audiences. Herzog's fondness for these Classical vignettes is reflected in her wide sweeping gestures as opposed to more introspective, winsome moments, her attention to melodic lines, selective use of ornamentation and strategic timing. She embraces these miniatures with the beauty of simplicity. At the age of 39, Abel moved to London in 1759, where he was appointed chamber musician to Queen Charlotte in 1764, hence Herzog's choice to play these pieces on viols by Edward Lewis (London, c.1685). 

 

Representing viol music of the British-born composers, Herzog devotes a significant part of the recording to music of  Tobias Hume, the enigmatic Scottish soldier and mercenary of foreign armies. Hume was a musician of great merit, known as a gamba player, indeed, a recognized composer promoting the virtues of the viol against those of the lute. From his two published lyra viol tablatures (1605, 1607) containing all his known works, she delivers Captain Hume's fine and distinctive (albeit non-virtuosic) writing with subtle shaping and sensitivity, as "Life" follows ebulliently from the plangent piece titled "Death". 

 

Fast forward to the 21st century and to a rich selection of pieces, six of which have been composed or transcribed for Myrna Herzog, an artist committed to playing contemporary viol music. She enjoys contact with the composers themselves, frequently collaborating with them to fashion music that is idiomatic for the instrument. In the series of small segments that make up "Sephardic Reminiscences", Israeli composer Dina Smorgonskaya (b.1947, USSR) combines both the exotic and the contemplative. Boris Yoffe (b.1968) is a Russian-born Israeli composer, today residing in Germany. Contemporary and largely monodic in style, also evocative, Yoffe's "Sonnet" (2006) is highly personal in character. In "Der kleine Bach" (2018), German composer, arranger, guitarist/keyboardist Günter Krause (b.1947) takes both performer and listener on an original and somewhat whimsical ride on a Bach-and Krause-tinted perpetuum mobile, its arpeggiated figures separated by "sighs". Melancholic, eastern European Jewish musical associations run through "Known Direction" and "Trains" by Israeli trumpet player, music educationalist and composer Aharon Shefi (b.1928, Jerusalem). "Trains" includes actual quotes of songs associated with the Holocaust, the train effects serving as a clear association of the deportation of Jews to Nazi camps. This was played on a late 19^th century viol gifted to Herzog by her teacher, Judith Davidoff. Both of these two excellent pieces by Shefi are performed with profoundly personal and emotional focus. In "Nordestina" (2010), by Brazilian classical guitarist Luís Otávio Braga (b.1953), the listener becomes aware of Braga's involvement in the choro genre, a form of Brazilian popular music that emerged from the mix of European instrumentation and harmonies with Afro-Brazilian rhythms. A richly varied and colourful canvas, Braga's piece gives free rein to musical ideas and styles, as he takes into account the possibilities of the viol, also making reference to the guitar, the composer's own instrument. The final track on CHOOSE LIFE "A Bridge to the Past" was written by Japanese composer/conductor Shunichi Tokura (b.1948). A piece replete with nostalgic melodies, it was written for Myrna Herzog as a Brazilian modinha (a traditional-style Brazilian song), this alternating with phrases of Japanese melody. 

 

CHOOSE LIFE is an album whose detail and exquisite playing will appeal to connoisseurs and devotees of the viola da gamba. The pieces were recorded in various venues (2005-2021) by Eliahu Feldman and David Feldman and splendidly mastered by David Feldman. Most were recorded during the Corona pandemic. Herzog's playing addresses all aspects of performance on the instrument, extending beyond technical considerations. In addition to showcasing the viola da gamba's "boundless possibilities of expression" in Herzog's words, the program takes on another dimension, symbolizing the wanderings of Herzog's family. Its title was inspired by the artist's father, Leon Herzog, a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust and emigrated to Brazil. He maintained that "every day we must choose life anew". The album can be heard on several digital platforms.