Achtung, Aufnahme! is a short opera by Wilhelm Grosz. It’s an absurdist, “Tragicomedy” with a libretto by Béla Balázs, who also wrote the libretto of Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle.  It’s very silly and really quite funny.  Basically it’s set on a film set.  A student who has been dumped by the leading lady shows up intending to kill her.  The director thinks he’s part of the cast and coaches him in his role despite repeated warnings from the pianist.  Finally the student realises what’s happening and makes a lucrative film deal with the director.  The music is heavily jazz inflected and fun to listen to.

It’s performed on CD by the venerable Dutch institution The Ebony Band; led by Werner Herbers.  They are specialists in German music of the 1920s and 30s and it shows.  The soloists are also very good.  Lilia Milek gets the tone just right as the grasping and heartless actress.  The men are equally good, especially the lugubrious student and the clueless director. Curiously the booklet lists the soloists but not who is playing what role.  For the record they are André Post, Dirk Laplasse, Matthijs van der Woerd, Romain Bischoff and Harry van der Kamp.

There are two shorter pieces on the disk; both selections of music from works of much the same period and style.  There’s instrumental music by Walter Goehr culled from the absurdist revue Komödien in Europa and a short version of a musical radio play; Die vertauschten Manuskripte with music by Mátyás Seiber.  This apparently is about a poet who writes poems for his two lovers; one prudish, one not, but the poems get mixed up with unexpected results.  I say “apparently” because the libretto for this isn’t included in the booklet (a full text and translation of Achtung, Auf nahme! is).

All three pieces are taken from live recordings so there’s applause and so on.  The recordings sound fine and have an acoustic that works for the music.  There’s a lot of documentation but it’s a bit patchy!  The record is available as a physical CD, MP3 or CD quality FLAC.  It’s a bit of an oddball but I enjoyed it.

Catalogue number: Channel Classics CCS46823