Shira Karmon - Little Cakewalk (2023) Hi-Res

The title of the album “Little Cakewalk” by the Israeli soprano Shira Karmon and the pianist María Garzón with songs by Viktor Ullmann is a contradiction to the content of this CD, as well as to Ullmann's life and fate:

Many of the songs on this album come from the time after the National Socialists came to power or his internment in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, where he escaped the obligation to work because of his musical work that was useful to the regime. Here Ullmann used a comparatively easier-to-understand tonal language, probably in order to be able to give the suffering people around him the most carefree enjoyment possible. Shira Karmon presents, among other things, three songs based on texts by Friedrich Hölderlin, the Six Songs op. 17, three Yiddish songs from the Six Spiritual Songs op. 20 and “Six Sonnets de Louise Labé” op. 34. Ullmann's compositional style has the lightness of jazz influences as well as complex contrapuntal phrases, unexpected melodic developments and a harmonic language that sometimes leaves the listener perplexed.