GMCD 7250 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under Orchestral Music Reviews ***Sound Clips***	20 Century Concertos for  Flute and Clarinet Works by HERMANN HALLER (1914-2002) WLADIMIR VOGEL (1896-1984) ROBERT BLUM (1900-1994) HANS SCHAEUBLE (1906-1988) PHILIPP JUNDT -  flute ELISABETH HÄFLIGER -  clarinet Camerata Zürich under Räto Tschupp A co-production between the Camerata Zürich and the Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Contents:

DDD Total Time= 56:42 / Recorded: Blum Haller, October 2001; Vogel Schaeuble January 2002; Radio Studio Zürich

This CD was conceived and planned jointly by the Hans Schaeuble Foundation and Räto Tschupp. The recordings were completed in January 2002. Just a few weeks later, on 13 February, Räto Tschupp died in his native city of Coire.

Räto Tschupp was the founder and director of the Camerata Zürich, one of Switzerland’s finest chamber orchestras. From 1975 to 1996 he was also the conductor of the Zurich Mixed Chorus. He directed the Berne Music Studio from 1976 to 1982, and from 1976 to 1988 was professor of conducting at the State Conservatory of Karlsruhe. He was chief conductor of the Aargau Symphony Orchestra from 1989 to 2001, and was also active as guest conductor of numerous orchestras, both at home and abroad. The nurture of the music of the 20^th century was of particular concern to Tschupp, and it featured large in his carefully-devised concert programmes. He conducted some hundred world premières, and was the dedicatee of many new works. Räto Tschupp received many prizes and honours for his service to the arts.

Robert Blum (1900-1994) - Concertino for Clarinet and String Orchestra
Robert Blum was born in Zurich. He studied with Volkmar Andreae at the local conservatory, then later in Ferruccio Busoni’s master class for composition at the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin (where his fellow students included Wladimir Vogel and Kurt Weill). Blum then returned to Switzerland, where he worked principally as a conductor of various choirs and orchestras, later also as a teacher of counterpoint and composition at the Zurich Music Academy. His oeuvre covers a broad spectrum of genres, including chamber music and large-scale instrumental and vocal works. He was also one of the finest film composers of his generation. Had he followed any one of several calls to Hollywood, he would no doubt have achieved the international recognition that his music deserves. He wrote his Concertino for Clarinet and String Orchestra in 1974, and described it at the time as follows:

‘The Concertino has three movements, the first two of which are connected without a break. They have barely a connection with traditional forms, though the usual fast-slow-fast scheme can still be discerned. The three movements themselves could be seen as short fantasies. Nor in its harmony is the Concertino conceived in a conventional manner. In the slow section, quarter-tones are utilized, which however are not used in a traditional harmonic sense, but rather to lighten up the melodic lines.’

Hermann Haller - Hermann Haller was born in Burgdorf. He studied first at the Zurich Conservatory with Volkmar Andreae and Paul Müller-Zürich, then in 1938-9 with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Afterwards, he studied piano with Czeslaw Marek in Zurich. From 1951 to 1954 he attended Paul Hindemith’s lectures at Zurich University. Haller was appointed to a post at the Zurich Cantonal Teachers’ Training College, where he taught until his retirement in 1979. He was one of the most important figures in Swiss musical life, and was president of the Swiss Musicians’ Association and of the performing rights society SUISA. Haller’s oeuvre is not large, but includes works in almost all genres, except for opera. His Double Concerto was written in 1961. After the successful world première in March 1962, the critic Max Favre wrote as follows:

‘This work, according to the composer himself, is derived from classical concerto form. However, the listener does not really discern contrasts and conflicts between the various themes. Rather is the form of the three movements perceived through the use of long arches of development that are unfolded, as it were, in a plastic manner. The form is marked in part by pregnant interjections from the orchestra, in part by the solo cadenzas. The thematic relationships between the movements are not unimportant; the Adagio and final Allegro are based on the same twelve-note row, whose intervallic contours can already be recognized in the first movement. The influence of twelve-note technique helps above all to unify the work in melodic terms, without, however, being detrimental to Haller’s style or his immediacy of expression.’

Hans Schaeuble (1906-88) - Concertino for Flute and String Orchestra, op. 47
Hans Schaeuble was born in Arosa. He went to school in Trogen, then in Lausanne, and studied from 1927 to 1931 at the Leipzig Conservatory under Hermann Grabner and Carl Adolf Martienssen. Thereafter he moved to Berlin. His success as a composer, both in the concert hall and on the radio, was confirmed by the offer of a contract from the publishing house of Bote and Bock. His Symphonic Music for Large Orchestra op. 22 was given its world première in 1939 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Carl Schuricht. However, Schaeuble was not able to continue his run of success after the Second World War. He composed less and less, and occupied himself at the last only with repeated reworkings of his earlier works.

 Schaeuble’s Concertino for Flute and String Orchestra was written in 1959, but underwent several revisions, as did most of his other works. Karl Ristenpart gave its first performance in 1966. The work lasts just a quarter of an hour, and consists of five small movements that flow one into the other. The first of these (Moderato) is itself tripartite; the lively Gigue is followed by another, gently flowing Moderato. An Intermezzo leads into an Allegro Deciso, whose final section contains an extended cadenza for solo flute. This work, which gives the soloist much freedom of expression, is rounded off with a short coda.

Wladimir Vogel (1896-1984) - Concertino for Flute and String Orchestra, VWV 16
Wladimir Vogel was born in Moscow to a German father and a Russian mother. The most important musical impressions of his youth were gained from the work of Alexander Skryabin. After the First World War, he moved to Berlin, where he studied first with Heinz Tiessen, then with Ferruccio Busoni in his masterclass for composition at the Prussian Academy of the Arts. He began a successful career that was stalled in 1933 when the Nazis took power, as he then had no choice but to leave Germany. Switzerland became his permanent place of residence, though he suffered for years from the danger of possible deportation to Germany. Vogel was one of the most significant proponents of the New Music. He succeeded in developing an individual form of twelve-note technique that allowed him to combine formal rigour with immediacy of expression, even into the works of his old age. His Concertino for Flute and String Quartet, written in 1979, lasts for just a quarter of an hour. The version recorded here with string orchestra was authorized by the composer himself.

Page revised 30.06.03