Roland Glassl - Complete Works for Viola & Piano - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Robert Shafer - Stabat Mater [COMPACT DISCS] date 09/24/2002

It is frankly little short of a miracle that the name of Carl Frühling is still remembered today, since we know next to nothing about him. Scant biographical notes provide a few reference points rather than an orderly résumé of his life, and a mere handful of the hundred or more works he is thought to have composed is extant today. The main reason for his relegation to oblivion is a fact that Frühling kept secret; a fact that nevertheless had to be declared on official documents he was Jewish. Even before the Nazis took power his religion had caused him problems, making it difficult for him to pursue a career as a composer. As a result, Frühling understandably tried to conceal his religious adherence. In 1907 he converted to Protestantism and in his CV of 1929 he stated that he was born in Vienna. The truth is however that he actually came from Lviv (the Germans called it Lemberg, and today, the city is in Ukraine), then a predominantly Jewish city, where he was born on November 28, 1868. Frühling concluded his piano studies around 1889 and was awarded the Liszt Prize. He quickly established himself as a pianist, and was frequently in demand as a chamber musician. As a composer, however, Frühling found it difficult to make his mark. Initially, he tried to make a name with easy-listening piano works; he wrote virtuoso salon compositions such as concert waltzes, mazurkas and later, fantasias on tunes from popular operas. Although they were meant to be popular works that would sell well, they nevertheless evince a sense of proportion and cleverly thought-out pianistic writing, and are marked by humor and imagination.

The chamber music of Johanna Müller-Hermann is distinguished by it's focus on pure melody, which often gives the music a lyrical character, but which she is quite willing to interrupt with stringent use of rhythm and contrast. The Austrian composer Johanna Müller-Hermann (1868-1941) was born in Vienna on January 15, 1868, to government official Alois von Hermann and Antonia Freiin von der Decken zu Himmelreich, who was eighteen years his junior. Known in her girlhood as Johanna von Hermann, she was the second of three children. The growing family enjoyed the life of the upper middle class in the inner city of Vienna. Johanna Hermann learnt the piano with Heinrich von Bocklet, who was later made Professor. She attended the Vienna Conservatory, studied musicology with Carl Navratil and historical counterpoint with Josef Labor, took violin and piano lessons, and participated in the exercises of Guido Adler. She also enrolled for the composition class of Josef Bohuslav Foerster. She published her first opus in 1903, InchSeven Lieder for solo voice and pianoInch. The premiere of one of these songs the following year drew public attention to Müller-Hermann, and her Violin Sonata was first performed in 1905, attracting a good deal of positive comment. Critical interest was increased by the publication of her String Quartet op. 6, which celebrated it's premiere six years later. The quartet was written during a period of instruction from Alexander von Zemlinsky. There is no known evidence of this teaching, nor are there any drafts, but the quartet is dedicated to Zemlinsky Inchin gratitudeInch. Public recognition came in 1917, when she was appointed Professor at the Vienna Conservatory in succession to her former teacher Josef Foerster. Her public profile benefited from her two orchestral works and even more from her choral works with orchestral accompaniment.