Wolpe: Zeus und Elida, Op. 5a / Schöne Geschichten, Op. 5b / Blues / Stimmen aus dem Massengrab / Marsch

This disc, part of Decca’s Entartete Musik series of composers suppressed by the Nazis, features Stefan Wolpe’s political theater works of the 1920s, enabling a more complete picture of his artistic development. Zeus und Elida is a Dada-esque work that Wolpe accurately labeled a “musical grotesque.” The story line has Zeus retiring to earth and obsessing over Elida, a whore. Things go frantically downhill from there, to music derived from dances ranging from the Charleston and tango to csárdás. Schoene Geschichten is a surrealistic chamber opera of seven brief vignettes, the text of some reading like Abbott and Costello routines. The disc’s last work includes a ghostly choral chant, Stimmen aus dem Massengrab (“Voices from the Mass Grave”), a chilling augur of the coming horrors. –Dan Davis