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RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
MARTIN RUMMEL Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz · Karl-Heinz Steffens
Together with his friend Holst, at the beginning of the 20th century Ralph Vaughan Williams deliberately took the course of liberating himself from ‘German influence’, as they called it, working for original British music. He found models and inspiration in original English folk music.
Most of the works recorded here rank among the less known pieces by the composer, but all of them very clearly reflect the personal hue, the absolutely ‘personal style’ of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
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SCHUBERT: SCHWANENGESANG D 957
STEFAN VLADAR, piano
20 years ago, at the beginning of his career, the young baritone Bo Skovhus made his first recording of Schubert’s “Schöne Müllerin”. Now, as a famous opera and Lied interpreter he presents a new production of all 3 Schubert Cycles: “I’m very thankful to do this again. As a young men you do not reflect so much what happen. Now, when I’m older, I understand much more about. Especially for this cycle it’s important to have another point of view.” (Bo Skovhus)
Stefan Vladar, the famous Viennese pianist and his partner on the piano, shows us the virtuosity of the piano part in a new different light.
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GEORGE ANTHEIL
Frank Dupree · Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz · Karl-Heinz Steffens
Trade Mark ‘Bad Boy’ – After all the experimental episodes the audience has faced in the field of New Music in recent decades, today the oeuvre of George Antheil will be welcomed with a great deal of sympathy and many a friendly smile. The American knew full well not only how to meet the expectations of an audience ‘prepared to protest’, but also how even to challenge them more overtly. An excellent example is the Jazz Symphony, written in 1925, shortly after George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924), that bursting the limits of the customary listening experiences of the age in a similar way to e.g. Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps of 1913.
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VIKTOR ULLMANN
Moritz Ernst · Dortmunder Philharmoniker · Gabriel Feltz
With the biography of Viktor Ullmann, a prominent individual fate in musical history stands out drastically from the anonymity of the millions of victims the Nazi regime exacted in the course of its attempted obliteration of individual minorities and particularly the mass extermination of the Jewish population in its sphere of influence. It can be only roughly surmised what striking musical movement was thus practically completely destroyed and was hence unable to continue its thrilling development into the second half of the 20th century. It was during these consistently difficult periodes that the Piano Concerto and Piano Sonata No. 7 have been composed, which demonstrates how clearly Ullmann was able to separate external circumstances and his musical imagination.
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ERNST TOCH
Anna Magdalena Kokits
Burlesques op. 31 (1923)
Three Piano Pieces op. 32 (1925)
Capriccetti op. 36 (1925)
Ten Etudes for Beginners op. 59 (1931)
Ten Intermediate Etudes op. 57 (1931)
Echoes from a Small Town op. 49 (1929)
Piano Sonata op. 47 (1928)
All the works on this CD derive from the inter-war years, i.e. the period in which Toch completely de-romanticized his music by disregarding late Romantic harmonic conventions and restrictions. “What has always fascinated and impressed me from the outset – particularly in the works after 1918 – is their reduction to the essential and salient. Every note conveys the impression of being absolutely necessary, and not one is superfluous or replacable. Ernst Toch’s music is convincing, and his story moves me in such a special way that I feel a great need to make his music accessible to a broader public again and to contribute my share towards re-integrating the ‘most forgotten composer of the 20th century’, as he often called himself in the final years of his life, in musical life today.” Anna Magdalena Kokits
