Klein Gideon - Chamber Music for Strings

Kocian Quartet

PRD 250224

Nakład wyprzedany, ostatni egzemplarz

Masterpieces hushed up in silence

Listening to this CD immediately raises the question of how it was possible that music of this format remained unknown so long after the end of the Nazi regime. The verdict on "degenerate art" continued to have an effect in many minds even after 1945, but on the other hand it is certainly hardly due to the one-sided interest of the 1950s and 1960s in serial composition techniques that the music of the Prague avant-garde of the time between the two world wars was, so to speak, caught between the mill wheels of the defeated Nazi ideology and a tendentious avant-garde of the time after the Second World War. The important contribution of a German-speaking elite of Jewish origin, who saw themselves as loyal citizens of the multiracial experiment Czechoslovakia, to European music of the 20th century has not yet been honoured according to merit. It is not a question of late reparations, but of acknowledging that this Prague avant-garde has made a central contribution to European music history, quite apart from the disturbing fact that most of the composers in this circle were victims of the National Socialists' murderous fury. While still in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, these composers continued to work unperturbed on their work

The highly gifted composer Gideon Klein was born in 1919 in the new state of Czechoslovakia after the collapse of the Danube Monarchy. His music captivates with its independence and liveliness. Along with Hans Krása, Pavel Haas and Viktor Ullmann, Klein was one of the main pillars of musical life in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

SACD x 1

Praga Digitals

27.08.2017

794881787562