Pál Hermann: Complete Surviving Music, Volume One
Pál Hermann, born in Budapest in 1902, was not only one of the leading cellists of his generation: he was also an important composer, one of the major figures in Hungarian music in the generation after his teachers Bartók and Kodály. But since only two of his works were published before his early death, in 1944, at the hands of the Nazis, and many more of them were lost, he has not had the esteem that he deserves. This series will present all his surviving compositions, most of them in first recordings. The major work on this first album, Hermann’s Cello Concerto of 1925 in a reconstruction by the Italian composer Fabio Conti (b. 1967), sits somewhere between Bartók and Korngold and bids fair to become a staple of the cello repertoire.
Clive Greensmith, cello (Tracks 1-5)
Kateryna Poteriaieva, violin (Tracks 6-9)
Alina Shevchenko, piano (Tracks 10-13)
Roman Marchenko, piano (Track 10)
Sofia Soloviy, soprano (Track 14)
Lviv International Symphony Orchestra (Tracks 1-9, 14)
Theodore Kuchar, conductor (Tracks 1-9, 14)
Listen To This Recording:
-
Cello Concerto (1925) – reconstructed by Fabio Conti (2016–17)
- I Allegro cantabile
- II Allegro
- III Lento – Andante – Allegro
- IV Andante
- V Allegro giocoso
- I Andante-
- II Allegro con brio-
- III Largo-
- IV Allegretto grazioso
- Előjátek
- I Allegretto
- II Molto allegro
- III Largo
- Ophélie
Kammersonate for violin with string orchestra (1930)
Előjáték (‘Overture’) for two pianos (1921)
Suite for Piano (c. 1924)*
Ophélie (Rimbaud; c. 1939) orchestrated by Fabio Conti (2018)
ALL EXCEPT * FIRST RECORDINGS
MusicWeb International :
Theodore Kuchar directs the Lviv International Symphony Orchestra throughout, and with exemplary results in the city’s Philharmonic Hall. Though two of the works bear a collaborative slant there is much to ponder in this disc, which happily adds to the meagre surviving corpus of works by Hermann. Happily, this is volume one in the series so more Hermann is on its way.’
—Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International