Walter Gronostay - In zehn Minuten / Within 10 Minutes (Chamberopera)

Programme booklet Ebony Band, Holland Festival 1995, Westergasfabriek Amsterdam:

Gronostay wrote the short opera or musical sketch In zehn Minuten while studying with Schönberg. The work was only performed once (Baden-Baden, 1928) and in various respects certainly did not conform to Nazi requirements regarding 'high art'. The conservative Rastatter Zeitung hardly mentioned the performance, but the prominent music journal Melos devoted several articles to Gronostay in which we read: The talent of this composer lies in his specific ability to create great tension in each dramatic action and situation and to unerringly exploit them musically. Attention was drawn to effective theatrics in the rhythmically agile, sharply marked declamation and in the striking instrumentation. One thing and another results in a permanent, sparkling alternation of fragmentary motifs: a sort of remarkable, sympathetic-impertinent situation comedy which almost seems to announce a new beginning and contemporary type of 'opera buffa'. In the concentration of this motivic action and chiselled detail one recognises the pupil of Schönberg. It remains unknown where Gronostay's subject came from. Its character and presentation - hardly an example of 'high art' - are similar to the choices made by other composers of the day in their so-called 'Zeitoper'.
Several versions of In zehn Minuten were found in Gronostay's library. It turned out that the libretto - the only part of the work that was printed - included texts not found in the (manuscript) score as used at the Baden-Baden performance. These passages are given between brackets [..] in the programme booklet. Why these cuts were made we do not know, but it is not unlikely that Gronostay omitted these 'degenerate' texts as a precaution. We know that Brecht en Weill adapted several texts on the advice of 'others' for their performance of Mahagonny a year before, also in the Baden-Baden Festival. As far as possible we have reconstructed the passages in question from detailed sketches and a piano reduction.