Nominee Classical Album of the Year - Solo or Chamber category
JUNO Awards 2018
“... This disc of unknown and spirited chamber music is superbly performed and recorded. Highly recommended.” ****
Robert Moon - AudiophileAudition.com - 29 August 2017
Music **** Sound ****
Giselher Schubert - Fono Forum magazine (Germany) - November 2017
“... This is the third volume in Chandos’s “Music in Exile” series. Performances are spirited and committed, the sound excellent...”
Stephen Wright - American Record Guide - November/December 2017
“... The ARC Ensemble reveals every glint and Gallic facet of Laks’ muse, supported by a good recording and documentary notes. Whether Laks’ assimilation of French models suppressed his own Polish identity or whether he was, from early adoption, in effect a French composer – he became a French citizen in 1947 – of Polish birth perhaps doesn’t much matter. His music remains lissom, clean cut and enjoyable.”
Jonathan Woolf - MusicWeb-International.com - 8 September 2017
“...The performances on this disc are all crystal clear, capturing the fine lines of Lak’s calculated counterpoint. Much of the music is light, and upbeat in character, with the works including winds have particular bounce ...” ****
Andrew Aronowicz - Limelight magazine.com.au - 15 September 2017
**** Excellent disc) *** (Good Sound)
Maxime Lawrence - Classica magazine (France) - September 2017
*****(Exceptional Album)
Bernardo Pieri - Musica magazine (Italy) - October 2017
“...The Canadian ARC Ensemble offers lively performance of a selection of delightful compositions...” ****
Richard Fairman – The Financial Times – 9 June 2017
Performance **** Recording ***
“...The ARC Ensemble brings out its depths [Passacaille] ... fascinating music ...”
John Allison – BBC Music magazine – September 2017
“...This set of his[Laks] chamber music, sparkily played by the ARC Ensemble – speaks of musical development thwarted by an experience that only inward-looking Passacaille of 1945 hints at ...” ***
Erica Jeal – The Guardian – 16 June 2017
SZYMON LAKS: Chamber Music—Divertimento—Wind Concertino—Passacaille—String Quartet No. 4—Piano Quintet—Sonatina—ARC Ensemble—Chandos CHAN 10983, 83:04, ****:
A Holocaust survivor’s vibrant neoclassical chamber music emerges from the shadows.
There have been a lot of recordings of Jewish composers who perished in the Holocaust of World War II in the last twenty-five years. Much less attention has been paid to those musicians and composers who survived the horrors of the Nazi regime. Composer and musician Simon Laks lived through the atrocities of a prison camp. His distinctive chamber music on this disc is a stellar example of discovering and reviving lost music from the 20th century. The Artistic Director of the ARC Ensemble, Simon Wynberg asserts, “Beyond the lives lost, the more complicated story has to do with how bigotry and war utterly changed the course of musical history by marginalizing the work of many survivors.” This CD is part of the ARC Ensemble’s Music in Exile series that is finding and performing significant music unperformed for over 50 years.
The Polish composer Szymon Laks (1901-83) was deported to the transit camp of Pithiviers in 1941 while teaching music and playing the violin in Parisian cafés. When he arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau he became conductor of the prison orchestra where his skills as arranger, conductor and linguist probably saved his life. But in his autobiography, Music From Another World, Laks rejected the idea that music has any healing or redemptive powers. “I personally believe that music was simply one of the parts of camp life.” But he also observed that music seemed to humanize some Nazi guards when they heard it performed. When the war ended in late April 1945 he returned to Paris and became a French citizen.
Most of the music on this disc was written in an affirmative neoclassical style, which makes this disc easy to enjoy. But the domination of modernism after World War II also made his music old-fashioned and easily forgotten. It is surprising that most of the music here does not reflect the horrors of the prison camps. The one exception is the Passacaille in this version for clarinet and piano. The repetition of an eight bar theme is quietly sad and could easily represent the isolation and alienation that he experienced in his War imprisonment.
The Quintet for piano and strings of 1967 is the composer’s arrangement of his Third String Quartet written in 1945. Amazingly, this radiant divertissement reflects none of the atrocities of his Nazi experiences. It’s a compendium of many Polish songs and dances that is distinguished by a beautiful slow movement that could be a memorial to friends lost in the war.
The remaining chamber music spans his career from 1927 to 1967. The early Sonatina for piano (1927) is pensive, spirited and stylish. It’s the kind of music he might have played in a French café. Between 1954 and 1960 Laks’ musical output waned due to ill health and economic difficulties. His film scores from this period were written under a pseudonym. The String Quartet No. 4 (1962) has a jaunty, memorable theme that is contrasted by an astringently profound Andante sostenuto. Happy, jazz inflicted spirits propel the last movement. This work won the Liege International Quartet competition and its almost 15 minute length would make an excellent opener in a chamber music concert.
The two woodwind works on this disc have an infectious whimsicality that make them very attractive. The Concertino for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon (1965) is light-hearted from the get-go because of the interplay between the two natural orchestral makers of mirth—the oboe and bassoon. But it’s not easy to perform and the ARC ensemble musicians are superb. Divertimento for violin, piano, clarinet and bassoon (1967) flows easily and has more clearly defined melodies. The melancholy Andante is Laks at his most expressive. There’s a lot of similarity to Poulenc in Lak’s woodwind music.
This disc of unknown and spirited chamber music is superbly performed and recorded. Highly recommended.
Robert Moon - audaud.com - 2017
Recordings of music by the Auschwitz survivor Szymon Laks are arriving thick and fast on such labels as CPO and DUX. Chandos has now entered the fray, dedicating the third release in their Music in Exile series, devoted to composers expelled by the Third Reich, to Lak’s chamber music. Once again, the Canadian ARC Ensemble do the honours. Previous volumes feature music by Paul Ben-Haim and Jerzy Fitelberg; the latter I reviewed a couple of years ago.
Laks was born in Warsaw in 1901 and initially studied mathematics in Vilnius before enrolling as a music student at the Warsaw Conservatory in 1921. He settled in Paris after graduation in 1925 and continued studies with Henri Rabaud and Paul Vidal. He became a founder member of the Association for Young Polish Musicians in Paris. When the Nazis occupied France in 1941 Laks, a Jew, was interned at Pithiviers. A year later he was deported to Auschwitz. In 1944 he was transferred to Dachau, prior to liberation in April 1945. He spent the remainder of his life in Paris. He devoted his energies not only to composing but also to writing books and translating. He died in 1983.
The four movement, Gallic flavoured Sonatina, is the earliest work here, composed in 1927. Ravel is a notable influence. The outer movements, animated and intensely chromatic, frame an attractive Scherzino, capricious and light-hearted, with rippling roulades, and a reflective and wistful slow movement. David Louie achieves some luminous colours in his captivating performance. Another early work is the Passacaille of 1945, its melancholy mirroring the horrors of the composer’s internment. Here it is heard in an arrangement for clarinet and piano. The clarinet’s doleful lament is set against the piano’s baroque-sounding accompaniment.
All of the other music on this CD dates from the 1960s, with the intervening years constituting a compositionally fallow period for the composer. The String Quartet No. 4 (1962) is set in three movements. The first, dominated by pizzicatos, is jazzy in character, and Laks employs some brilliant effects such as bowing near the bridge to obtain shimmering, glacial sonorities. Calm serenity informs the slow movement, which is followed by a spiky, energetic finale with accented rhythms.
The Concertino for oboe, clarinet, and bassoon, from the mid-sixties, will appeal to lovers of Poulenc. Ingeniously scored, Laks’ contrapuntal skill is very much in evidence. Each of the three instruments has its moment in the spotlight. A beguiling slow movement nestles between two movements of a sunny disposition. Two years later in 1967 the composer wrote his Divertimento for violin, clarinet, bassoon, and piano. Again, the mood throughout is upbeat and genial, and the lightly-textured scoring produces some diaphanous effects.
The Quintet is the most substantial work, and it’s a 1967 arrangement of the 1945 String Quartet No. 3. Although the original dates back to the time of Laks’ internment years, you won’t find any sombre utterances here. Several Polish songs and dances are brought into play. The slow movement’s ethereal ponderings strikingly contrast with the finale’s genial plucky pizzicato passages.
These impressive performances are well-recorded, the Koerner Hall offering warmth and intimacy. Simon Wynberg’s booklet notes provide welcome background to the music.
Stephen Greenbank - musicweb-international.com
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