Schulhoff Schoenberg Chamber Works

After Berg, Schoenberg, Bartók and Stravinsky, Isabelle Faust now tackles Britten with Jakub Hrůša and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, revealing a little-known facet of the British composer. This concerto, highly personal in its language, combines drama with humour, seriousness with satire, in music of overwhelming emotional depth. The programme is completed by early chamber works.

This second volume of miscellaneous chamber works contains all of the music that is not a formal quartet, quintet, or sextet. In includes the piano trios, the wonderful Terzetto for two violins and viola, works for solo instrument and piano, pieces for piano four-hands, and all of those little, undefinable works, some of which (such as the Bagatelles for two violins, cello, and harmonium) are magnificent.

Following the Grammy nominated Volume 2 featuring the music of Fitelberg, the Canadian ARC Ensemble presents Volume 3 in its "Music in Exile" series, dedicated to the music of Szymon Laks. Born in Warsaw in 1901, Laks studied in Paris before being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He soon joined and conducted the Auschwitz orchestra (his auditioning with a 'Jewish' work - Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto - went unnoticed). Although the trauma of his imprisonment left him alienated and reclusive, few of his works refer specifically to the Holocaust.