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Hans Winterberg (1901-1991) left behind a rich chamber music oeuvre, which has only recently been made accessible through first editions and CD productions. In addition to one string trio, four string quartets and two wind quintets for the standard instrumentation of flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, his estate contains works in the most diverse and sometimes most unusual combinations of winds, strings and keyboard instruments. The Suite for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and harpsichord from 1959 was probably written - like many of his other works from the 1950s and 1960s - on commission from Bayerischer Rundfunk, although no traces of performances or broadcasts during the composer's lifetime have been found. As always with Winterberg, the unconventional, humorous and at times surreal handling of the material is surprising, making the Suite seem like an echo of Czech modernism of the interwar period, which Winterberg, who lived in Prague until his emigration to Munich in 1947, had a lasting influence on. The tonal language is moderately modern: Polytonality, modality, layers of fifths and fourths dominate. The character of the three movements is determined by the tension between the elegant aura of the harpsichord and the rusticity of the wind movement, between post-Janáček folklorism and neoclassical esprit à la Stravinsky.
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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.
