Distler was a promising German composer who was a professor of church music in Berlin in 1940. His music is usually polyphonic and often uses the pentatonic scale. Partly due to this, the Nazis categorized his music as “degenerate.” This added to the pressures of the death of close friends, aerial bombing and the possibility of his being conscripted into the Wehrmacht, causing Distler to take his own life in l942.
The three-movement harpsichord concerto was completed in 1936 and is quite a surprise since few modern composers were writing for the instrument at that time. The composer was the soloist in the first performances. He described it as “a furious piece,” and in the first movement we hear dissonant chords loudly repeated in the bass. The longest of the three movements is the finale, which consists of 13 variations on a fairly familiar theme from early composer Samuel Scheidts.
The nine short selections from Distler’s stage music to a production using the Bluebeard story are something of a premiere, since his complete score for the play was lost and these selections only discovered in 1999. Three of the numbers are vocal selections with the singers sounding very echoey and off-mike; also they seem to miss the satirical intent of the words. However, the instrumental portions are fascinating and quite more interesting than Distler’s church music – making you wonder what he would have written had he lived more than just 34 years.
The harpsichord concerto is actually a 1964 analog stereo original remastered for SACD, and is lacking in the low end as well as sounding less than hi-res. Neither is the 2002 surround recording of the music for Bluebeard much of an improvement sonically. So although Distler and his music are of great interest, this SACD could be a good deal better.
– John Sunier
