(++++) ON BEYOND OFFENBACH

Paul Lincke: Overtures, Volumes 1 and 2. Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt conducted by Ernst Theis. CPO. $16.99 each.

     It is impossible to fully and fairly evaluate Paul Lincke (1866-1946) in the 21^st century without confronting and thinking through some elements of the 19^th and 20^th. In the 1800s, the influence of Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880) was far more extensive and far deeper than more-recent audiences enamored of his incessant tunefulness may realize. Franz von Suppé imitated Offenbach directly; the best of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas have a strong Offenbach feeling about them, and there are some deliberate borrowings here and there; and there was more than a little cross-pollination between Offenbach and Johann Strauss Jr. (including their creation of, respectively, the companion waltzes Abendblätter and Morgenblätter). There is a general impression that Offenbach’s influence waned rapidly after his death, or rather that he became influential in fields quite different from his own – specifically musical theater. In some ways this is correct – certainly the operetta direction of Lehár veered sharply away from the Offenbach model – but in other respects, Offenbach remained very much the pole star for other composers.

     This is where Lincke comes in. The two excellent CPO volumes of Lincke’s music, ebulliently performed by the Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt conducted by Ernst Theis, again and again sound so strongly “Offenbachian” that listeners – especially lovers of Offenbach’s particular brand of genius – will likely be astonished that the 18 works on the two CDs are not better known and more frequently heard. But that gets to the difficulty of Lincke himself. A lifelong Berlin resident and devoted lover of the city, the apolitical Lincke had a highly successful career that was upended, as was so much else, by World War I; indeed, there were signs it was already fading when hostilities broke out. Lincke stopped writing for the stage altogether in 1917, channeling his creativity in other ways both musical and nonmusical (he founded and ran a highly successful publishing business). His pronounced attachment to Offenbach’s style and predilections in harmony, orchestration and other areas happened to coincide with the cultural demands of the Third Reich – and Lincke became (and did not object to becoming) a musical figurehead for that odious regime, ending up having a complicated relationship with it (much as Lehár did). Lincke’s entwinement with the Third Reich inevitably colors analyses of his life and music, and it is this that seems largely to have kept his music comparatively unknown on international stages.

     Strictly from a musical standpoint, this is a real shame, because the unabashed delights to be heard again and again throughout the two CPO discs provide a pleasurable anodyne to a great deal of more-intense 20^th-century music and, for that matter, to the stresses of 21^st-century life. Each of the discs opens with one of Lincke’s most-famous works. The first starts with Berliner Luft, a kind of semi-official theme song for Berlin as a city and the piece for which Lincke remains best-known. The second disc starts with Frau Luna, Lincke’s first huge hit and a work that was re-staged and reincarnated numerous times from its first performance in 1899 through to a “gala-ized” version staged in 1935. These pieces are relentlessly tuneful, excellently orchestrated, and packed with features that are instantly recognizable as throwbacks to the Offenbach era, from types of tunes (waltz, galop, etc.) to pacing to the use of specific instrumental highlights (percussion touches, for example). Among the remaining pieces on Volume 1 are Lysistrata, Casanova, Venus auf Erden, Grigri, an entrance piece called Siamesische Wachtparade, and the waltz Verschmähte Liebe – perhaps Lincke’s most-famous non-stage piece. Among the works on Volume 2 are Nakiris Hochzeit, Ein Libestraum (Lincke’s last large-scale piece, composed in 1940), Im Reiche des Indra, Das blaue Bild, the waltz Sinnbild, and the Brandbrief-Galopp. There is no particular order to the presentation, either chronological or otherwise, and in some ways the sequencing is odd: the Siamesische Wachtparade is on Volume 1, while the overture to the operetta from which it is drawn, Nakiris Hochzeit, is on Volume 2.

     Each CD concludes with two of the unusually conceptualized pieces that Lincke wrote after he ceased to produce stage works: they are overtures to theater pieces that do not exist. Volume 1 includes Ouvertüre zu einer Operette and Ouvertüre zu einem Ballett; on Volume 2 are Ouvertüre zu einer Revue and Ouvertüre zu einer Festlichkeit. This last was written in 1933 and performed at festivities marking Lincke’s 70^th birthday in 1936, and is his longest overture – and one of his best. However, considering the fact that Lincke’s birthday was being celebrated within the Third Reich and by the official enforcers of its cultural norms may significantly undercut the enjoyment and appreciation of the piece for some listeners.

     Lincke’s music, heard without historical context, is a very strong example of just how extensive Offenbach’s influence was in the many years after his death – but it can be hard to separate Lincke from the situation in which he lived his later life. He actually died not in Berlin but in a town in the Harz Mountains, to which he fled as the Allies closed in on Berlin and eventually bombed most of it to rubble – including Lincke’s house. Lincke’s music is wonderful in practically every way, but some audiences may find it unpalatable to the point of being unlistenable because of its associations with the world within which so much of its composer’s later life took place.