Koessler: String Quintet, String Sextet

Frankfurter Streichsextett

CPO 777269

»We need not introduce to the Viennese this serious, very important artist, who had the fortune of enjoying the sincerest esteem from Johannes Brahms. […] As far as the new sextet is concerned, first of all it should be noted that the same is constructed on the firmest polyphonic basis and that nowadays there are not five composers alive who would be able to complete such a work.« This review of 1899 concerns Hans Koeßler, a composer who was born in the Upper Palatinate but spent most of his life in Budapest, where he succeeded Robert Volkmann as the director of the composition class at the music academy in the Hungarian capital. It was thus that a composer from the Upper Palatinate became the teacher of all the important Hungarian composers of the twentieth century. Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók, Ernö Dohnányi, Leo Weiner, and Imre Kálmán were all his students. He himself wrote more than 130 works for almost all the genres (except the opera), most of which unfortunately are no longer extant. And our first two recording premieres demonstrate what a great loss this is!

CD

Muzyka klasyczna

CPO

21-06-2007

761203726929