Oliver Triendl

Our fourth release in this series offers listeners the opportunity to enjoy chamber music for piano and strings by Boris Papandopulo. The recording premiere of his Concertino in modo antico presents a little masterpiece of Croatian Neoclassicism. As the title itself indicates, here the composer draws on historical models both in form and content. For example, the Overture, a free rendering of the sonata form, recalls similar forms from the Late Baroque and Early Classical periods. It pulsates in a lively motoric rhythm and is based on the polyphonic imitation of numerous short motifs running through the entire movement and reaching their end in a little Fugato.

Gunnar de Frumerie grew up in a musical family. His mother was a skilled pianist who gave him his first piano lessons, and his father was an architect with a great and lively interest in music. Gunnar’s siblings and later several other family members also became good musicians. He himself appeared early as a pianist and started composing early on. At the age of nineteen, he won all three prizes in a com- position competition organized by the Hirsch piano store in 1927. He had submitted four piano pieces but only written the manuscript to one of the pieces himself; the others were written by his mother, father, and sister, so that the hand-writing would not reveal the author. The jury found all the pieces equally good. The surprise was therefore great when it was discovered that they had the same author. Unofficially, it was said that if there had been a fourth prize, he would have received it as well. It is music written by a young man who was still a student at the Royal Academy of Music. He made his public debut as a pianist in January 1929, playing, among other things, his own works in the main hall of the Music Academy.

As a young man, the composer Hans Gál experienced an artistic turning point, as the worlds of late Romanticism and New Music collided during the First World War. Everything was in motion. During this turbulent time, Gál shaped his own style with ingenious formal progressions.

Originally from the Czech Republic, Eduard Nápravník is now inevitably associated with the rise of the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra of St. Petersburg, which he led for nearly half a century and elevated to a leading international orchestra. He thus left his mark on Russia's musical scene, both musically and in terms of cultural politics, and was also in demand as a composer. In view of this biography of Nápravník, nothing could be more obvious than for him to use the most diverse instruments of the symphony orchestra as models when composing, to project their sonorities onto other instruments as well. His Piano Quartet op. 42 also has an orchestral layout. Nápravník succeeds in capturing orchestral color and force even in the small instrumentation and unleashing it monumentally even in small chamber music halls. The Violin Sonata op. 52 is similarly conceived. Especially in the opening, Nápravník's orchestrally influenced thinking is again evident, as the piano forms a pure surface as a starting point, over which the violin delicately rises - here Nápravník uses burgeoning mock polyphony to create the impression of several melodic instruments. In the finale, Nápravník brings together the aforementioned core elements of his style to create a large-scale, playfully striking movement with an orchestral texture and ironclad cohesion despite a wide variety of themes. A masterfully crafted yet effective sweep.

Although the Concertos for Piano (left hand) by Korngold, Prokofiev, Ravel and others may be better known, it was Josef Labor who marked the beginning of the genre in 1915 with his first Konzertstück for Piano (left hand) and Orchestra. It was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in Russia during the First World War, but was determined that his career should progress nonetheless. Labor was part of Johannes Brahms’ close circle of friends who, at the age of three, had lost his sight due to smallpox. Composition was a luxury for him, in that he had to rely on the help of an amanuensis to commit his works to paper. Labor’s music is very skillfully composed, always sensuous and, above all, melodious. These world premiere recordings represent a high-point in Capriccio's Labor-Edition, which for a number of years has been spotlighting the sensitive music of this largely forgotten composer.

The two piano quintets, composed seven years before and seven years after 1900, point to two special features in Huber’s development as a composer. If in the earlier quintet he was still endeavoring to find his place in the European music world in keeping with the best of his times, then in the later quintet he self-confidently went his own way as a Swiss composer who did not hesitate even to incorporate native folk songs into his music. The fact that the earlier quintet was first performed some eight years after its composition possibly had to do with Huber’s recognition that during his earlier years he had much too thoughtlessly published compositions that had proven to be not quite finished.