Petersen Quartet

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Karl Amadeus Hartmann is emerging from the obscurity imposed first by his "inner exile" in Nazi Germany and again when postwar fashion ignored his emotionally powerful music. This disc is an excellent introduction to one of the century's major composers. Concerto funèbre, written in reaction to Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia, is appropriately bleak, deeply moving in its passionate protest against barbarism, with a solo line that depicts courageous struggle and faltering hope. Isabelle Faust is an impressive interpreter, technically impeccable and digging deep into the moving core of the work. The symphony, also for string orchestra, is as impressive; passionately brooding in the outer movements and alternately playful and stark in the central Allegro. The Chamber Concerto features dazzling clarinet solos (Paul Meyer is stunning, especially in the Kodály-influenced dance sections). It's a big, warmly rhapsodic piece covering a wide range of emotions and sonorities. This is a disc to treasure. --Dan Davis

Tracks:

Concerto funebre: Introduktion (Largo)
Concerto funebre: Adagio
Concerto funebre: Allegro di molto
Concerto funebre: Choral (Langsamer Marsch)
4. Sinfonie: Lento assai - con passione
4. Sinfonie: Allegro di molto, risoluto
4. Sinfonie: Adagio appassionato
Kammerkonzert: Introduktion
Kammerkonzert: Tanz - Variationen
Kammerkonzert: Tanz - Variationen
Kammerkonzert: Tanz - Variationen
Kammerkonzert: Tanz - Variationen
Kammerkonzert: Tanz - Variationen
Kammerkonzert: Tanz - Variationen
Kammerkonzert: Fantasie

Amazon.com

Karl Amadeus Hartmann is emerging from the obscurity imposed first by his "inner exile" in Nazi Germany and again when postwar fashion ignored his emotionally powerful music. This disc is an excellent introduction to one of the century's major composers. Concerto funèbre, written in reaction to Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia, is appropriately bleak, deeply moving in its passionate protest against barbarism, with a solo line that depicts courageous struggle and faltering hope. Isabelle Faust is an impressive interpreter, technically impeccable and digging deep into the moving core of the work. The symphony, also for string orchestra, is as impressive; passionately brooding in the outer movements and alternately playful and stark in the central Allegro. The Chamber Concerto features dazzling clarinet solos (Paul Meyer is stunning, especially in the Kodály-influenced dance sections). It's a big, warmly rhapsodic piece covering a wide range of emotions and sonorities. This is a disc to treasure. --Dan Davis

Customer Reviews:

Two successes out of three.......2003-11-18

ECM, regular surveyors of all that is trendy in 20th century music, turn their attention here to the music of Karl Amadeus Hartmann. Hartmann lived through the Nazi years in Germany, writing music for the desk drawer--music protesting vehemently against the barbarism he saw around him, and only after the war was over could his music emerge into the wider world.

This disc places two concerti--very different works as they are--around one of Hartmann's eight symphonies. The Concerto Funebre is explictly a work of political protest, born of Hartmann's disgust at the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia. The anguished, lyrical violin line leads the string orchestra from despair to fury and back again, before the introduction of an old Czech hymn brings the work to a rather equivocal close. With a work as emotionally extreme as this, it is difficult to hold the structure together, but Poppen manages marvelously, while Faust's performance of the solo violin part is extraordinarily intense. This is as close to a definitive account of this major work as I have heard.

The Fourth Symphony is a rather lesser work. Weighing in at around half an hour, in a three movemenet slow-fast-slow format, this symphony for strings is too long and sprawling, so that despite some glorious melodies and delightful contrapuntal writing this listener's patience is exhausted long before the end.

Much better--even though it's less ambitious--is the earlier Chamber Concerto, for solo clarinet (a wonderful performance by Paul Meyer), string quartet and string orchestra. This is very much neoclassical Hartmann, with some great spicy harmonies and bouncy rhythms, but this is not a frivolous work as so many neoclassical concerti are. Underscoring this, the outer movements both end with hushed epilogues containing some of Hartmann's most beautiful melodic writing.

Despite the weaknesses of the Fourth Symphony, then, this is a valuable disc, and the performances are quite outstanding.

Music Review: