Oliver Triendl

In addition to working together with living composers, the rediscovery of undeservedly forgotten works is an immense enrichment for us instrumentalists, who all too often find ourselves in the role of reproducing a few well-known pieces. It is for this reason that my joy was all the greater when one day Oliver Triendl told me about a genuine treasure: during his extensive research on composers from the Balkan region, he had unearthed a number of completely unknown works for bassoon and piano and immediately had the intuitive idea of recording them on CD. However, the result of his research was so extensive that several CDs could have been filled with the works he had found, and so we played through piles of sheet music for half a night until we finally arrived at our selection for this CD. With this CD, I hope to contribute to the expansion of the repertoire of my instrument, and also to promote a wider dissemination of the classical musical tradition of the Balkan region, which has so far been under-represented, and not only in the bassoon repertoire. – Theo Plath

After the signal event that was World War I, gifted young composers trooped into the French metropolis full of hope. In 1925, the publisher Michel Dillard coined the term L’École de Paris (‘The Paris School’) in reference to the foreign composers then living in Paris, principally the Hungarian Tibor Harsányi (1898–1954), Poland’s Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986), Bohuslav Martinů from Czechoslovakia (1890–1959), Russia’s Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), and the Romanian Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985), all of whose works he specialised in disseminating. These composers came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinů [and Swiss composer Conrad Beck (1901–1989)], died there. All five initially addressed the difficult task of translating their countries’ folk music idioms into standard musical notation. Several works on this programme are heard in their world premiere recordings.

The friendship between Mátyás Seiber and Antal Doráti dates back to their youth, when they were the two youngest students in Zoltán Kodály's composition class in Budapest in the 1920s. Doráti was one year younger than Seiber and held him in high esteem from the beginning. In the memoirs, Így láttuk Kodályt [‘Thus We Saw Kodály’], he writes the following: "The two 'best' were Mátyás Seiber and Lajos Bárdos. Matyi [Mátyás] wrote a great string quartet at the time, which has survived. One of our tasks was to write variations on a Handel theme. In response to one of Seiber's slow-tempo variations, Mr Kodály said: 'That's nice'. In our eyes - at least in my eyes - that was the canonization of Matyi".

After the devastation of World War I, young, hopeful, gifted composers trooped into the French capital. In 1925, the publisher Michel Dillard coined the term École de Paris (‘Paris School’) for the foreign composers then living there, especially Hungary’s Tibor Harsányi (1898–1954), Poland’s Alexandre Tansman (1897–1986), Czechoslovakia’s Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959), Russia’s Alexander Tcherepnin (1899–1977), and Romania’s Marcel Mihalovici (1898–1985), whose works he specialised in disseminating. All five composers featured in this album came to Paris from Eastern Europe and all, with the exception of Martinů, died there. They initially attempted to translate the essence of folk music from their homelands, using standard musical notation to express idiomatic subtleties that were difficult to capture. The programme includes the world premiere recordings of Harsányi’s Rhapsodie and Sonate Pour Violoncelle et Piano, and Mihalovici’s Sonate dans le caractère d’une scène lyrique.

This is CPO’s second release of Pejačević’s chamber music. The internationally active and renowned Sine Nomine Quartet from Switzerland and Oliver Triendl are outstanding advocates on behalf of this versatile composer. The last movement of the Piano Quintet Op. 40 is a highlight; with a solemn introduction and animated theme, which pervades the entire movement with kinetic energy.

From the time I first heard Ludwig Thuille's masterly Sextet for Piano and Winds in B-flat Major, Op. 6, thirty years ago, I have wanted to hear more music by this sadly neglected composer, a more traditionalist friend of Richard Strauss. Apart from a meager handful of recordings (quickly out of print) of the Sextet, though, for years nothing else was available. I read that Thuille, apart from large vocal works, and a good deal of chamber music, had written one symphony, the Symphony in F, and at least one piano concerto, and have been watching eagerly over the years, hoping that someone would finally commit them to disc. And at last!

Nineteenth century Austrian composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg started his career as a lesser Wagner and ended it a lesser Brahms. This CPO disc contains two works from the latter part of his career, his four-movement Piano Quintet in C major and his three-movement String Quartet in F minor, performed by the Minguet Quartett with pianist Oliver Triendl. Both works are superbly composed and deeply felt. Herzogenberg clearly knew exactly how to construct a sonata-form movement, precisely how to write counterpoint, and unerringly how to keep his music moving.

The piano concerto in D minor was composed between 1931–1935 and premiered on November 23, 1935, by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Toivo Haapanen, with Ernst Linko as the soloist. The concerto is preserved only as a piano reduction and instrument parts, but the original score is lost. The piano part contains several cuts and facilitations by the 1935 soloist, while the instrument parts show no omissions. The most probable result was that the orchestra played some passages without the soloist. For this recording, Leiviskä’s original solo part was restored. Several reviews, mostly under pseudonyms, discussed the symphony after its first performance.

Thuille, a Savoyard, created a name for himself in Munich’s academic life. Now, if his name is known at all, it is because of his famous pupils who included Hermann Abendroth, Ernest Bloch and Walter Braunfels. His writing as a composer has been overshadowed by his reputation as a teacher. Perhaps all that will be changed by this CD. It deserves to. In fact he wrote plentifully with almost one hundred songs and six operas although I can find only three listed in my old edition of Grove.