Composer: Hans Winterberg
Performer: Amernet String Quartet
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Toccata
Catalogue: TOCC0683
Release: 2023
Size: 1.22 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
String Quartet No. 2
01. I.
02. II. Molto tranquillo
03. III. Tempo scherzando, poco moderato
String Quartet No. 3
04. I. Allegro moderato
05. II. Andante pastoral, molto moderno e misterioso
06. III. Presto
String Quartet No. 4
07. I. Mässig schnell
08. II. Intermezzo. Andantino ([crotchet] = 79)
09. III. Ziemlich schnell ([crotchet] = 162)
The life of the Prague-born composer Hans Winterberg (1901–91) reads like the outline of a detective novel. Having survived internment in the Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto as a Czech Jew, after the War he settled in Munich as a German citizen, and his music enjoyed a number of broadcasts – but after his death his estate disappeared into the vaults of a research institute and was placed under embargo, emerging only in 2015, since when recordings and performances have revealed him as one of the major Czech voices of the twentieth century. This first recording of three of his four string quartets – their language downstream from Janáček and Schoenberg, with folk-music roots refracted through mid-century Czech modernism – confirm Winterberg’s standing, and underline his importance as a lone survivor of the group of young Czech composers whose infinite promise was extinguished in the Holocaust.