The World of Yesterday - Benjamin Koppel & Mames Babegenush (CD)

Benjamin Koppel: alto sax
Mames Babegenush:
Bo Rande: flügelhorn & pocket Trumpet
Emil Goldschmidt: clarinet
Lukas Rande: saxophones
Nicolai Kornerup: accordion
Andreas Møllerhøj: double bass
Morten Ærø: drums & cimbalom

Composed by Benjamin Koppel

THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY is righteously so considered a pinnacle of European literature. In these memoirs, which Stefan Zweig wrote in 1941, just a year before he committed suicide with his wife in despair over the rise of Nazism, he tells the story of his life in three periods.
Before the First World War, when life was safe, cation was paramount, artistic vision and edu interpersonal curiosity a matter of course. The interwar period, characterised by uncertainty, increasing interpersonal distrust and, above all, the rise of totalitarianism.
And finally, life after the incorporation of Austria into the Third Reich, where the Nazi persecution of Jews forced Zweig into exile.
With Vienna as his setting and in fabulous language, Zweig celebrates education, knowledge and art as vital prerequisites for a civilised and compassionate Europe. And it is precisely these views, written in Zweig’s wonderfully imaginative language, that inspired me to compose a suite in which each of the seven movements is based on seven different chapters of his book.
The music was composed for one of the best ensembles on the Danish music scene today, Mames Babegenush, who, with a genuine love and interest in Jewish folk music, have developed their own original and modern approach to klezmer number of years. Their sound and music over a approach was the perfect starting point for my compositional ideas, and our interplay alternates between the sharply composed to passages of both solo improvisations as well as collective improvisations. And the music quickly took on a life of its own; inspirations from an amazing American klezmer family, the Epstein Brothers from the 1930s, early Duke Ellington and even Mahler and Ravel found their way into the various movements, which in my own understanding are anchored in both Zweig’s past and our own present.
And my hope is that the music reflects the great impression Zweig’s memoirs have had on me as an extremely important literary source for reflections on education, solidarity, humanity and empathy.
– Benjamin Koppel

Recorded at The Village Recording, 2020
Produced by Benjamin Koppel
Mixed and mastered by Boe Larsen, Millfactory
Painting by Paul Fischer
Cover by Mads Wolff / Eks-skolens
This release is supported by Dansk Artist Forbund

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