Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin - Massenet & Ravel: Parisienne - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Hans Winterberg grew up in Prague where he was one of a whole cadre of composers in the new Czech musical tradition. He is one of the few Jewish composers who survived the terror of World War II. His tale of survival is complicated and involved him, as a Czech Jew, having to seek refuge in post-war Germany, whereas contemporaries and colleagues like Viktor Ullmann, Erwin Schulhoff, and Hans Krása died in the concentration camps. He saw his music as Incha bridgeInch between the Slavic East and the West and admitted at one point that his musical starting point was Schoenberg. Audibly more present than Schoenberg, however, is a central European Impressionism, synthesized with complex rhythms.

Berliner Sinfonie-Orchester - Daphnis et Chl [COMPACT DISCS] date 01/01/1993

When the music of Nikolai Kapustin was discovered by a wider audience in the West, it was positively shocking Who was this Soviet (!) composer, whose music sounded more like an Oscar Peterson improvisation than anything else - but who wrote detailed scores, black with notes?! As we discover more and more of his music (and there's so much more yet to discover!), a very distinct, always wholly charming voice emerges, whether in a freewheeling outright-jazzy work like his Concerto for 2 Pianos and Percussion, the more symphonic Fifth Piano Concerto, or the frisky Sinfonietta which transports us into a smoky 1940s bar in Manhattan.