Schoeck: Notturno / Schreker: Der Wind

Schoeck, Othmar, Schreck, Gustav

Genz, Stephen, Leipziger Streichquartett

MDG 307 1815-2

With over 40 minutes, Othmar Schoeck's "Notturno" the main work of this new recording with the Leipziger String quartet and the baritone Stephan Genz. It's almost overwhelming what a multicolored nuanced Facets the artists of the difficult work and the way they draw it out. As a contrast, Franz Schrekers sounds rarely heard ballet pantomime "The Wind". • Schoeck uses texts by Nikolaus Lenau, the extremely artfully motives of the black romanticism in of an almost classical design language. It's all about fear and grief, but especially and loneliness. And the Loneliness is by no means always only fateful and depressed. One only hears the downright the sarcastic beginning of the last piece, where the Singer praises the benefits of lonely drinking: When thoughts soak in the wine, / You roast me the Mud up / How of the Ganges heil´ge Waves / An elephant choir clouds... • Schoeck himself was the big world always strange. He stayed in tranquil Zurich, from a short Max Reger's apprenticeship in Leipzig. The but left his mark: From the highest contrapuntal Quality rubs its music into modern harmonies, but always free from of any zeitgeist. In general, Schoeck has Masterpieces of his contemporaries - and then in a singular personal style to exactly to make me stop it. • Airier sounds follow: For Franz Schreker's impressionistically inspired ballet pantomime "The Wind", which was caused by the phenomenal Dance icon Grete Wiesenthal commissioned the strings of the Leipzig band are getting their hands String quartets amplified by wind instruments of the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Olga Gollej at the piano. Simply masterful, like fragrant piano arpeggios through delicate melody fragments of the wind instruments and Strings, until the upcoming Storm uprooted the tree, the leaves of which were End quietly and almost inaudibly rustling in the wind..

CD x 1

MDG

8/28/13

760623181523