
Alexander Krein (1883–1951) was one of the leading modernist
composers of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in the
Russian city of Nizhni Novgorod into a family of traditional Jewish folk
musicians. His father, Abraham, was a folk violinist, seven of whose ten
children became professional musicians, notably David (1869–1926), the
concertmaster of Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater orchestra, and Gregory (1879–1975),
also a composer, in addition to Alexander.
After a childhood
spent performing in his father’s band, playing klezmer music (East European Jewish folk music), Krein entered the
Moscow conservatory at age thirteen as a cello student. He went on to study
music theory and composition with composers Sergey Taneev and Boleslav
Yavorsky. While still a student, he began to compose song settings for Russian
and French symbolist poetry.
By the time he
graduated in 1908, he had developed a highly original style, one which combined
the new harmonic language of modern composers such as Debussy, Ravel, and in
particular, Scriabin, with the lyrical melodies and distinctive modes of Jewish
folk music.
Jewish Sketches, #2 represents one of his
first efforts in this direction, and forms part of a two-set series of Evreiskie eskizi (Jewish Sketches) for
clarinet and string quartet (1909 and 1910) based on melodies from his own
father’s klezmer repertoire. It was written at the behest of composer Joel
Engel, who encouraged Krein to explore his own Jewish musical heritage. Published
by the Moscow-based Russian music publisher Jurgenson, the piece earned
immediate acclaim, establishing Krein as a major new voice in both Russian and
Jewish music.
Critics were
particularly struck by the use of the classical string quartet with a clarinet
line that evoked the idiosyncratic melos and intonation of klezmer music, a sound sometimes said to mimic the emotive
character of Jewish prayer chant, the soulful inflections once described as “laughter
through tears.”
Krein played a major
role in the emerging school of Jewish national music as a composer and active
member of the Society for Jewish Folk Music’s Moscow Branch (1913–1919) and its
successor organization, the Society for Jewish Music (1923–1929).
In the Soviet era he
served in a variety of roles in the Music Section of the Soviet Ministry of
Education and later the editorial board of the State Music Publishing House.
Beginning in 1917 he
composed extensively for the theatre, including Moscow’s Hebrew-language
Habimah Theater and the Moscow, Ukrainian and Byelorussian State Yiddish theatres.
During the 1920s he wrote several important works, including the symphonic
cantata Kaddish (1921), the First Piano Sonata (1922) and the First Symphony (1922–25).
In these compositions
Krein embraced both Jewish folk and liturgical melodies as part of his search
for a distinctive, non-European Jewish sound. As the Communist regime grew more
and more ideologically restrictive in the late 1920s and 1930s, Krein struggled
to reconcile his art with the increasing political pressures.
In spite of obvious
political compromises in the form of works such as the cantata Funeral Ode in Memory of Lenin (1926)
and the symphonic oratorio The
U.S.S.R.—Shock Brigade of the World Proletariat (1932), Krein continued to
boldly explore Jewish musical and literary themes in his work well into the
1940s.
His opera Zagmuk (1929) concerned the Jewish
uprising in ancient Babylon and was staged as the first Soviet opera at the
Bolshoi Theater in Moscow (1930). In 1934 he was awarded the title of Honored
Artist of the Soviet Union.
As late as 1941 Krein
composed music for the productions of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater and his Second Symphony (1945), a meditation on
the historic sufferings of the Jewish people from ancient times through the
Holocaust.
(c) James Loeffler, Pro
Musica Hebraica
Alexander Krein (1883-1951) learned Jewish folk music as a child first hand. His father
was a well-known Klezmer musician and folk poet. He played the violin at Jewish
weddings and his children had to accompany him on zymbales. All of the seven Krein
brothers later became musicians, some of them were even famous, such as the
composer Grigori Krein or the violinist David Krein.
Alexander
Krein celebrated his biggest successes in the 1920s as a composer of stage
music. In this way the performance of the play The night in the old market (after Izchak Leib Peretz) at the
Jewish state theatre in Moscow (GOSET) became a triumph for the theatre as well
as the composer. Even in Western Europe, where the theatre gave guest
performances in 1927, the play was greeted with great enthusiasm.
After
Jewish music was banned in the Soviet Union, Krein, in contrast to Michail
Gnesin, adapted to the conditions. His ballet Laurentsia, in which Krein used Spanish folklore, later achieved
great popularity. This ballet has remained in the repertoire of many Russian
theatres to this day.
In
comparison his most important work, the cantata Kaddish, could not be performed at all. For decades Kreins score
was considered as missing. Only a couple of years ago it was discovered that
the score had been saved. The work was then performed in Russia. In the West
this great music is still unknown.
(c) Jascha
Nemtsov, Musica Judaica