Sonate

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.