english 
deutsch 
français 
Sonate
Product Details
Description
Hans Winterberg has only recently been rediscovered as one of the most important representatives of the Czech avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century. Performed but not published during his lifetime, his works were locked away after his death due to tragic circumstances and are now being published for the first time in a collaboration between the Exilarte Centre of the Vienna University of Music and Boosey & Hawkes. In contrast to his colleagues and friends Ullmann, Haas, Krása and Klein, Winterberg survived the Shoah through a series of miracles. As a student of Alexander Zemlinsky and Alois Hába, he is both a successor to Janáček and a member of the wider circle of the Second Viennese School.
The Sonata for Violin and Piano, written and premièred in Prague in 1936, is one of the most important chamber music works of the pre-war period. It exhibits all the characteristics of Winterberg's personal style: a sensuality of sound grounded in French Impressionism with a simultaneous expressionist rigour of harmony, a small-scale motivic structure, a sophisticated play with polyrhythmic patterns and, especially in the last movement, a musical impetus borrowed from Czech folklore.
More Information
Technical Details
Preview/Media Contents
Turning Points - Episode 2: Hans Winterberg
Turning Points - Episode 2: Hans Winterberg
Turning Points - Episode 2: Hans Winterberg
More from this series
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.
