Hartmann

As is well known, the Third Reich drove many of its gifted composers into exile, to early deaths or to the concentration camps. But a significant responsibility devolved on another group, who became ‘internal exiles’, remaining in Germany, but refusing to become cultural ornaments of the Nazi regime. Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1963), in Bavaria, consistently kept the spirit of modernism and human commitment alive in his own work.

Robert Muller-Hartmann was born in Hamburg, in 1884, the son of the piano teacher and clarinettist Josef Muller and his wife, Jenny. He studied in Berlin for four years, but then returned to Hamburg where he pursued a successful career combining teaching, composing, and writing. His works were widely performed by conductors such as Karl Muck, Carl Schuricht, Richard Strauss, Otto Klemperer, and Fritz Busch, and regularly played on German Radio. With the advent of National Socialism, in 1933, Muller-Hartmann was forced to resign from his teaching posts at the University and Conservatory.

Hartmann,Janacek - Piano Sonatas - Benedikt Koehlen (1991)
Classical | EAC: FLAC+Cue+Log | 1 Cd, Covers | 154 Mb
Label: col legno - Date: 1991

Karl Amadeus Hartmann was born on 2 August 1905 in Munich and came into contact with art and music at an early stage. He studied trombone and composition at the Staatliche Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich from 1924 to 1929. Hartmann presented his first composition which displayed influences of jazz, Dadaism, persiflage technique and New Objectivity within the framework of the Opera Studio at the Bavarian State Opera…

The concertos of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, not only richly varied in relation to each other, but also a welcome addition to his more unified group of eight symphonies. Hartmann discovered new and individual solutions that confirm the importance of his concertos as significant and original contributions to the development of this form in the 20th-century. The works compiled on this CD were written between 1931 and 1955, thus providing a superb insight into all of Hartmann's important creative phases.