Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Recommendations.

[Mirror Image]

yea? yea? what? what? DETAILS MAN, DETAILS!!!

Okay..well I listened to his Symphonische Hymnen yet again and was blown away by it. Such intensity and raw power. I also listened to Concerto Funebre yet again and thought it was simply outstanding. I loved the beautifully lyrical last movement. I thought it ended the work gloriously.

[Mirror Image]

Damn, imagine what Leonard Bernstein could have done with Hartmann? He would have definitely pounded it home in the 6th!

[Scion7]

I doubt Bernstein would have been very good at all.  He was only listenable when conducting American composers' works (a quick jot thru his Beethoven symphonies will seem like chalk on a blackboard) - but he did do American composers very well indeed.

Funny how after you were so blase with "Andre" a few years ago about this composer that you've seen the light.   

He wrote some interesting chamber music, and one truly outstanding piano piece (the Sonata 1945.)

[Karl Henning]

If ever a conductor and his orchestra launched a new season with a statement of intent, it is Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic. Opening with a programme that included a Turnage premiere and a piece of Ligeti, they followed it up with a concert built around an extraordinary, rarely heard work by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, the German composer who resisted the Third Reich by taking himself into internal exile, and who spent the years after the war influencing the new European avant garde.

In fact, Gesangsszene was Hartmann's final work, unfinished when he died in 1963 at the age of 58, with the last few lines of a lengthy passage from Jean Giraudoux's 1944 play Sodome et Gomorrhe still to be completed. It remains, though, a prescient work, likening the fate of the biblical cities to those of the 20^th century. Somewhere within the overblown score, there is an impassioned work trying to get out - Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw seems to be the model - but Hartmann overdoes things, saturating the textures so that the baritone soloist struggles to be heard.

Despite its faults, it was thrilling to hear Gesangsszene superlatively conducted by Jurowski and sung with such dramatic power and intelligence by Matthias Goerne. Perhaps Jurowski was making a point too by prefacing it with Strauss's Metamorphosen, a work that elegises the German culture Hartmann came to reject. Rather than sticking to the 23 solo strings that Strauss specified, Jurowski made use of the whole of the LPO's string section, reserving the supernumeraries for the climaxes and passages of greatest expressive power. It did not quite come off - adding weight of tone is not the same as generating extra intensity - though every line was beautifully moulded, and the Brahms that concluded the concert (the Second Symphony) was equally well-shaped.

At The Guardian here.

[Karl Henning]

Per this:

Composed in 1951-53, Symphony No. 6 (along with his Symphonies Nos. 3, 4 and 5) is based on an older work which Hartmann fundamentally revised.  It is the Symphony "L'Œuvre," written in 1938 and premiered in Lüttich in 1939, which is based on the novel by Emile Zola (1840-1902) by the same name, telling of the unbalanced and self-doubting painter Claude Lantier's fate (for whom Cézanne modeled against his will).

Must be a particularly misleading translation.  "[F]or whom Cézanne modeled against his will" makes it sound like Claude Lantier is an actual artist.  But (if I understand the discussion of the book correctly, which I find on Wikipedia) Lantier is a fiction, based on Cézanne.

So it should be something more like "based on the person of Cézanne, without the artist's leave."

[not edward]

So, has anyone heard this new(ish) multi-conductor set of the Hartmann symphonies with a couple of Dutch orchestras?

[asin]B00H1EOR3Y[/asin]

I only found out it exists today.

[Cato]

So, has anyone heard this new(ish) multi-conductor set of the Hartmann symphonies with a couple of Dutch orchestras?

[asin]B00H1EOR3Y[/asin]

I only found out it exists today.

No, but I love that picture of Hartmann on the box!   0:)

[Mirror Image]

So, has anyone heard this new(ish) multi-conductor set of the Hartmann symphonies with a couple of Dutch orchestras?

[asin]B00H1EOR3Y[/asin]

I only found out it exists today.

I've owned it since it's release but have not heard a note from it (yet). This will change soon I hope.

[lescamil]

I got that one a while ago. It's nice to have a bunch of live performances on disk of these underperformed works, especially with the sound enhanced on many of the recordings (I heard many of the original broadcasts). The Metzmacher is still the benchmark for me, though.

[Mirror Image]

I got that one a while ago. It's nice to have a bunch of live performances on disk of these underperformed works, especially with the sound enhanced on many of the recordings (I heard many of the original broadcasts). The Metzmacher is still the benchmark for me, though.

The Wergo is the benchmark for me and has yet to be bettered. Kubelik was a master in Hartmann's music, although, like the Challenge Classics set, the Wergo set has various conductors, but Kubelik has the most performances throughout the set.

[Mirror Image]

I doubt Bernstein would have been very good at all.  He was only listenable when conducting American composers' works (a quick jot thru his Beethoven symphonies will seem like chalk on a blackboard) - but he did do American composers very well indeed.

Funny how after you were so blase with "Andre" a few years ago about this composer that you've seen the light.   

He wrote some interesting chamber music, and one truly outstanding piano piece (the Sonata 1945.)

You're probably right about Bernstein, although I don't agree that Bernstein was just good with American composers. His Shostakovich 5th live in Japan performance, for example, remains a true audio treasure in my collection. Anyway, yes, I've come full circle with Hartmann, but, I got into the Second Viennese School before Hartmann and they certainly helped me understand the composer more, especially Berg.

[Daverz]

I doubt Bernstein would have been very good at all.  He was only listenable when conducting American composers'

QFB

[Mirror Image]

QFB

QTB?

[Daverz]

QTB?

What would be the opposite of "QFT"?

[Mirror Image]

What would be the opposite of "QFT"?

What's QFT? Sorry, my internet lingo isn't the best.

[jlaurson]

So, has anyone heard this new(ish) multi-conductor set of the Hartmann symphonies with a couple of Dutch orchestras?



I only found out it exists today.

I only found out about it a few weeks ago, too... when chatting, the management of Markus Stenz said that they thought he was so great with Hartmann and that they loved him on that new recording. WHAT new Hartmann recording?!? Needless to say, I was intrigued. 
One Dutch orchestra btw., and a bunch of very fine conductors. Have only made it through Symphony No.1 yet, and yes... the Wergo is going to be hard to surpass... but it's good to see a third set out there and certainly the sound is great.

[Jo498]

I only know QFT as abbreviation for Quantum Field Theory, very probably not what is meant here...

[North Star]

[T]he Wergo is going to be hard to surpass... but it's good to see a third set out there and certainly the sound is great.

Quoted For Truth

[Mirror Image]

I only found out about it a few weeks ago, too... when chatting, the management of Markus Stenz said that they thought he was so great with Hartmann and that they loved him on that new recording. WHAT new Hartmann recording?!? Needless to say, I was intrigued. 
One Dutch orchestra btw., and a bunch of very fine conductors. Have only made it through Symphony No.1 yet, and yes... the Wergo is going to be hard to surpass... but it's good to see a third set out there and certainly the sound is great.

So far, I've listened to Symphonies Nos. 1-6 from this new set and have been quite impressed with the performances all-around. The audio quality is, of course, of special note here, but, yes, it's going to be hard to top the Wergo. It is great to see that there are three cycles now.

[Daverz]

I only know QFT as abbreviation for Quantum Field Theory, very probably not what is meant here...

I'm not sure what the opposite of Quantum Field Theory would be.  Maybe the Timecube guy would know.