FRIEDRICH CERHA

Cello Concerto / Heinrich Schiff

 

FRANZ SCHREKER

Chamber Symphony / Netherlands RCO/ Peter Eötvös

 

Heinrich Schiff violoncello

Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra / Peter Eötvös

 

Tracks:

 

(1) Cerha - Concerto for cello and orchestra I   13.10 *

(2) Cello Concerto II   10.41          

(3) Cello Concerto III   11.34

(4) Schreker - Chamber Symphony in one movement 25.54 *

 

Total time: 61.29

Recommended listening *

 

Focus on Vienna and Austrian music-making

Superb performance – and a premiere recording of the Cerha concerto – by master cellist Heinrich Schiff

Schiff’s ECM recital disc with Frank-Peter Zimmermann last year received very high praise - Gramophone Editor’s Choice, BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice 

Also an important continuation of ECM’s work with insightful conductor Peter Eötvös and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra

Friedrich Cerha, widely considered Austria’s greatest living composer, makes ECM debut at age of 81

 

Music/Artist background:    Friedrich Cerha is best known worldwide as the composer who completed the 3rd act of Alban Berg’s opera Lulu, played universally today in his reconstructed version. Born in 1926, he has always been an independent spirit. Associated early on with the two rival 12-tone schools - Hauer’s and Schoenberg’s - he founded, in 1958, the ensemble “die reihe” which remained under his direction until 1983 and set high standards for the performance of modern music. His Cello Concerto, commissioned by the Wien Modern and Berlin Festivals, employs characteristically unorthodox textures. Heinrich Schiff’s brilliant, energized cello moves swiftly and agilely through ever-changing climates coloured variously by soprano sax, bongos and congas, and organ as well as banks of strings. Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony is a fascinating oddity, written in the middle of Word War I for the teaching staff of Vienna’s Academy of Music. The liner notes describe Schreker as a “consummate artist in timbres” and the symphony as “phenomenal“. It is Schreker’s only genuinely symphonic work.

 

Austrian cellist Heinrich Schiff made his debut in Vienna and London in 1971, launching a stellar solo career that has led to performances with all the great orchestras and pre-eminent conductors in the major music centres of the world. For years he has taken a special interest in contemporary music, working regularly with many leading composers of our time and premiering their works.

 

A highly regarded composer, Transylvania-born Peter Eötvös is, as conductor, one of the best known interpreters of 20th century music. In 1978, at Boulez’s invitation, he conducted the inaugural IRCAM concert in Paris, and was subsequently musical director of the Ensemble InterContemporain. He has worked extensively with the BBC Symphony and Budapest Festival Orchestras and Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra – with whom he has recorded Elliott Carter’s What Next? (ECM4721882) and the all-Hungarian Bartók/Eötvös/Kurtág CD with Kim Kashkashian (ECM4654202) for ECM New Series.

 

Summary:   Master cellist Heinrich Schiff gives the premiere of the Cello Concerto – an intense, brilliantly scored work coloured variously by soprano sax, bongos, congas, and organ as well as banks of strings – written for him by Friedrich Cerha, at 81 widely considered Austria’s greatest living composer. It is paired with Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony, and both are superbly interpreted by conductor Peter Eötvös and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra.

 

ECM4763098