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Hans Winterberg's Quintet was composed in 1981/82 at his last residence in Steppberg, Bavaria, on the occasion of a composition competition organised by the East German Cultural Council. Until the release of this first editon, it had been recorded for a CD production but had not yet been performed live in concert. With this work, which Winterberg entitled „Cyclame“ on one of the two manuscripts, the composer concludes his chamber music oeuvre, which was rich in the most diverse instrumentations and had begun brilliantly in 1935, during his time in Prague, with the Quintet for violin, 2 clarinets, horn and piano. The first two, predominantly lyrical movements, which are characterised by great delicacy on a rhythmic-metric level, are marked by a certain mildness of age. With its musical verve, the last movement takes us back to Winterberg's origins in Bohemian-Moorish folklore, which was one of the most important impulses in his work, alongside the school of Schumann, which was conveyed by Zemlinsky. Winterberg was the only important Czech composer of Jewish descent to survive the Shoah. In his post-war oeuvre, he was able to continue the fascinating German-Czech cultural symbiosis that was brutally destroyed by Nazi Germany - unnoticed by the international music world. It is time to bring this wonderful musical treasure, long hidden from us, back to life.
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Turning Points - Episode 2: Hans Winterberg
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Hans Winterberg, born in 1901 into a Jewish family that had lived in Prague for centuries, studied with Alexander von Zemlinsky and Alois Hába. Until the annexation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany in 1939, he worked as a conductor, pianist, and composer. Unlike his friends and colleagues Viktor Ullmann, Hans Krása, and Gideon Klein, he survived the Shoah through a series of miracles. In 1945, he moved to Munich, where he began a promising second career. As a representative of a moderate avant-garde, he found himself increasingly marginalized from the late 1960s onwards. After his death in 1991, his artistic estate was locked away in a German music archive and, since none of his works had been published during his lifetime, he was forgotten. Since 2023, Boosey & Hawkes has been publishing Winterberg's chamber music in an extraordinary edition project as first editions in cooperation with the Exilarte Research Center at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. They reveal music of unique charm, in which influences from Janáček, the Second Viennese School, and French Impressionism are amalgamated into an original and exciting personal style.
Following the chamber music, the edition project will focus on the first editions of Winterberg's piano works and songs.
