Bertold Hummel
Keyboard Games – Piano Music for Children

10 Piano Pieces for Children, Op. 56b (1974/79/82)
Sonatina for Piano, Op. 56a ( 1975)
Keyboard Games: A Little Piano Album for My Grandchildren, Op. 103d (2000)
from ‘Mimi’s Keyboard Fun’ ( 2001/2002/1995)
Little Fanfare – Petite Fanfare
Good Mood – De bonne humeur
Short Carnival March – Petite marche de carnaval
Three Waltzes for 2 and 4 Hands, Op. 95f (1994/2001/1998)
(with Birgit Urban)

Markus Bellheim (piano)

Recorded in April 2006

Keyboard Pieces

In the spring of 2002, shortly before my departure for Greece, I spotted a sheet music book entitled TASTENSPIELE by Bertold Hummel amongst the new releases in the window of a Munich music shop. I bought the book and took it with me to a secluded island, where I played from it every morning before setting about my daily work. These miniatures had a profound effect on me and always brought me back to myself.
This CD brings together pieces from the years 1975 to 2002. Almost all were composed for children – for my six sons (and also for my daughter-in-law’s wedding), for my wife and for a friend. In their clarity and precision, and in their educational approach to music, they resemble Bartók’s piano cycles *FOR CHILDREN* and *MICROCOSMOS*.
It is fascinating that the ‘acoustic scale’ derived by Bartók from the overtone series, with its famous fourth degree, runs like a common thread through the pieces. It appears for the first time in the final movement of the SONATINA from 1975, manifests itself in the ‘BIMMELBAHN’ and the ‘MARCH OF THE TIN SOLDIERS’ from the 10 PIECES FOR CHILDREN, and can be found in the ‘PRELUDE’ as well as in the ‘LITTLE MELODY’ from the ‘KEYBOARD PIECES’.
Despite their great freedom and melodic scope, the compositions never stray from the foundations of tonality. As a pupil of Harald Genzmer and a great-grandson of Paul Hindemith, Bertold Hummel always felt a need to write for the next generation of musicians. The title ‘TASTENSPIELE – A Little Piano Album for My Grandchildren’ says it all. Children are encouraged to learn how to play the piano in a playful way. The composer incorporates the most contrasting musical styles into his miniatures without any preconceptions: church music in the ‘CHORAL’, tonal clusters in the ‘BARCAROLE’, bitonal echoes in the ‘SCHERZANDO’ and the ‘BIMMELBAHN’, brass band parodies in the ‘MARCH OF THE TIN SOLDIERS’, animal imitations in the ‘CUCKOO’ and the ‘LAMENTING NIGHTINGALE’, and jazz elements in the ‘BUDENZAUBER’ and the ‘CLOWN’.
The 16 pieces for keyboard were composed for his grandchildren Anna, Klara, Rafael, Charlotte, Silja, Josephine, Viola, Mirjam, Fabian, Sven, Laura Sophia, Simon, Jakob and Julia. Once the cycle was complete and had already been printed, the 17th grandchild, Johannes Augustin, was born, to whom a ‘LITTLE FANFARE’ was dedicated. These are all short character studies which also offer a revealing insight into the respective dedicatees. Although the pieces stand alone, there are musical cross-references both within the 16-part cycle and beyond.
A particular fascination for Hummel lay in his use of numerical symbolism – for instance, the waltz for his wife Inken on her 67th birthday is exactly 67 bars long – and in his play with notes derived from a name. His own musical autograph consists of the five notesB-E-RTOL-DH-UMM-E-L. Characteristic features here are the ascending tritone and the descending fifth, which – in their original form and transposed – haunt many of his pieces. In the composition *KLEINE FANFARE* (Little Fanfare), written for 12 August 2001, the five notes are combined with the nine notesJO-H-A-NN-E-SA-U-G-U-S-TINH-UMM-E-L, which are derived from the name of his newborn grandson, Johannes Augustin Hummel. Listening to this short composition, which consists of just 15 bars, one gets the impression that the grandfather is carrying his grandson safely through the world, and at a tempo of 88 beats per minute, the magical number corresponding to the 88 piano keys. Ten months later, Johannes Augustin was dedicated another little march (GUTE LAUNE) featuring ascending and descending intervals of a second. Here, the grandson’s first attempts at crawling seem to have found a musical counterpart.
The only piece on the recording that was not composed for a family member was written by Hummel to mark the 73rd birthday of Bishop Paul Werner Scheele of Würzburg, with whom he co-wrote the oratorio *DER SCHREIN DER MÄRTYRER*. In this piece, too, Hummel plays with the musicalised name of the dedicatee:P-A-ULW-E-RN-E-RS-C-H-E-E-L-E. In this 73-bar waltz, the ascending tritone and descending fifth found in the composer’s name also haunt the piece, and they conclude the composition, which ends with transfiguring, ‘Lohengrin’-like A major chords.
If one takes to heart Erich Kästner’s words: ‘Only those who grow up and remain children are truly human’, one understands why the waltzes for the bishop’s wife, the Bishop of Würzburg and the young bride and groom, Gabriele and Stefan David, are being released together on a CD of piano music for children.

Wilfried Hiller

A photograph in the booklet shows the 77-year-old composer Bertold Hummel, originally from Baden, surrounded by no fewer than 16 grandchildren. Is it any wonder, then, that Grandad Hummel has spared no effort in creating piano pieces for children – ‘Mimi’s Keyboard Fun’ and a little piano album for his grandchildren entitled ‘Keyboard Games’? These are playful pieces brimming with rich textures, a wealth of folk-inspired melodies and, at times, an unexpected depth, which Hummel brings together here in his 10 piano pieces, Op. 56b, composed between 1974 and 1982. Among them are simple yet imaginative exercises such as the seemingly superficial ‘Ostinato’, but also a deeply sorrowful nightingale and a tourist train that jingles less than it rolls heavily along the tracks. The young pianist and winner of the International Messiaen Competition, Markus Bellheim, plays them with great verve and dedication. Where he is given more scope for longer passages, as in the Sonatina, Op. 56a, his full creative range and richness of expression are revealed. Admittedly, these tonal pieces – which stylistically recall fellow composers and practitioners of roughly the same age, such as the Munich-based Herbert Baumann – are anachronistic in some respects. But at the time these charming works were composed, shortly before his death, Hummel was beyond having to seek a connection with modernism. Markus Bellheim impressively demonstrates that Hummel wrote wonderful music even without this.
Helmut Peters (piano news 5-06)

The Baden-based composer Bertold Hummel, who died in 2002, undoubtedly had every reason to write for children. After all, on the cover we see him in a photograph surrounded by 14 grandchildren. His miniatures – played with genuine warmth by Markus Bellheim – are full of charm, featuring miniature railways, barrel organs and tin soldiers. Those who prefer a more classical and formally perfect style should listen to his piano sonata, which lasts just six minutes. For piano pupils and those who aspire to become one, this is a real treasure trove!
Helmut Peters (fono forum 03/08)