CD RELEASE - Vienna 1913
The years between 1900 and 1914 are perhaps among the most exciting and diverse in European music history. It was during these years that what is today commonly referred to as musical modernism was formed. It is the period in which the great European "schools" of the musical avant-garde take shape in Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and especially in Vienna, and in which music and musical life fan out into a variety of aesthetics, styles, and genres that are reflected in the set of terms we use today to try to get a handle on the art of this era: Impressionism,Expressionism, Art Nouveau, Neoclassicism, Folklorism, Late Romanticism/Post-Romanticism, Symbolism, etc. Many of today's much-performed works of classical musical modernism were written in those years immediately preceding the First World War.
1913 is also the year of scandalous premieres: Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, Alban Berg's Altenberglieder, and Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps.
The program selection of this CD is grouped around two works written in Vienna in 1913, in this "summer of the century" (Florian Illies) that ends the long 19th century and ushers in the dark 20th century: Alban Berg's Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 5, and Egon Kornauth's Sonata, Op. 5, for Clarinet and Piano. They are joined by two songs by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the late F minor Clarinet Sonata op. 120.1 by Johannes Brahms from 1894, whose musical aura is still palpable in early 20th century Vienna.
CD Release: 21.10.2022 on the label Avi Music