Piano Sonata, Op. 6 (1918) -- Ilse Fromm-Michaels (1888-1986)

Asher Ian Armstrong, piano (live performance)
I. Markig
II. Sehr langsam. Frei im Zeitmaß
III. Lebhaft, aber nicht schnell
Ilse Fromm-Michaels was in many ways a casualty of war: “one of the artists whose work and life were drastically affected or even destroyed by the reprisals of National Socialism [...] She had already built a brilliant career as a performing and creative musician but it was violently broken down by the measures of the Nazi regime” (G. Distler-Brendel). Fromm-Michaels was born in Hamburg to a mathematician and a school principal in 1888, and showed musical promise early-already at the age of 13 she relocated to Berlin to pursue serious musical studies, later moving to conclude her study in Cologne--already, she was a formidable artist with a burgeoning concert career laid out before her-her vast repertoire encompassed concertos by Rachmaninov, Reger, and Busoni.
This career was “brilliant but unfortunately brief” (F. Rothenberg); Fromm-Michaels was married to a Jewish man, a district judge, who was forced in 1933 to “voluntarily retire”; because of her marriage, she was forbidden from engaging in any public artistic activities. Fromm-Michaels watched as her husband became progressively more and more ill, as relatives emigrated or attempted to, and as others were arrested and taken to concentration camps: the situation was one of “isolation, fear and uncertainty. Fromm-Michaels was under enormous stress due to the threat to her husband and her son (...), the pressure to teach as much as possible, and the de facto ban on work” (C. Friedel). Yet, she continued to work and teach in private-her home became a secret sanctuary for others who were the targets of the Nazi regime. Gisela Distler-Brendel notes “I, the daughter of a mixed marriage who was also not allowed to study at university, was a student of Ilse Fromm-Michaels. I experienced the unforgettable, music-filled atmosphere in her house.”
An exploration of Fromm-Michaels’s music demonstrates again a singular, beautiful and powerful artistic voice; this music’s absence from concert stages and music pedagogy makes the sting of “canon” prejudice exponential. Her first great keyboard masterpiece is the monumental Sonata, Op. 6, in which “one senses her horror at the First World War” (B. Dorn). The first movement (Markig) commences with granitic octave batteries which restlessly move from key-to-key before finally arriving in a dark-lit c-sharp minor. The music unctuously glides to c minor, and the first of many barrages of double notes precipitate the refulgent second theme-an exquisite snow-globe of lyricism in an otherwise storm-tossed landscape. The development is filled with hair-raisingly jagged re-imaginings of the theme, some with more than a hint of sulfur, but the volcanic floes eventually come to a full stop at a harmonized restatement of the opening octave contour, and the recapitulation unfolds in a truncated form which still encloses the almost sacredly tender second theme. Rather than providing relief, the second movement refocuses the “horror” of the first movement as a stringent funeral march. The dotted rhythms associated with this idea gradually loosen and recede into the background, to make way for a contrastingly lyrical but non-committal theme in thirds. Fromm-Michaels gently achieves the parallel major (C major) by the end of this movement, which organically welcomes the last movement’s f minor tonality. This breathless movement (Lebhaft, aber nicht schnell) contains the most hazardous-and explosive-moments in the whole sonata; beginning with an undulating, restless theme with a conspicuous slide of chromatic triads at its centre, the music quickly reaches an almost over-extended, blistering chordal theme set in the extremes of the keyboard’s range (easily living up to Fromm-Michaels expressive indication massig). The movement’s middle episode is something of a contrapuntal briar-patch, but provides a brief rhythmic oasis; once emerging from this resting point, the music seems to proceed on a controlled, slow-burning fuse. Fromm-Michaels holds her one “FFFF” in reserve until the music’s most white-hot moment, when the hard-won dominant has finally been established; yet, the most harrowing moment is still to come: an epic keyboard-wide climax replete with double-note textures-the aural effect being a true “cathedral of sound.”
At the conclusion of World War Two, the artistic and wider world Fromm-Michaels had known was forever changed; her husband died in 1946, and from 1949, she stopped composing: “her creative powers were broken” (G. Distler-Brendel). Yet, it is not just the interruption of her career, but the combined “general neglect of women artists which (has denied) Fromm-Michaels the respect and attention she deserves. Her death on January 22, 1986, at age 97, ended a long career devoted to music, first as a performer and composer, and in her later years, as a teacher” (F. Rothenberg).

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