THE OTHER AMADEUS
posted by James Reel
We’re almost caught up with links to my articles for Strings magazine that appeared during the blogging hiatus. A couple of issues back, I wrote a piece on the string music of a very interesting figure:
Karl Amadeus Hartmann may be the most significant 20th-century composer whose music you barely know. His _Concerto funèbre_, a mature, moving work for violin and orchestra, is the main composition that carries Hartmann’s name from one concert hall and CD player to another, but even string players familiar with that piece probably don’t realize there’s more violin music where that came from. Early in his career, Hartmann wrote two suites and two sonatas for solo violin. These pieces from the 1920s have only recently entered circulation. They don’t entirely suggest Hartmann’s later style, but they are recital-worthy and show Hartmann was an assured composer almost from the beginning.
There’s more, including a chat with German violinist Viviane Hagner about one of those early suites, available here.
Oh, and to motivate you to visit the site, here’s a picture of Viviane Hagner:
