Karel Reiner: Music for Cello

Karel Reiner (1910-79) — a major missing voice in Czech music — suffered under both of twentieth-century Europe's major tyrannies. As a Jew he was imprisoned by the Nazis, miraculously surviving a series of atrocities: Terezín, Auschwitz, a camp near Dachau and a death march. Then, back in Prague after the War, he was accused of 'formalism’ by the Communists. This first CD of a series reviving Reiner's music presents the large-scale Concerto he completed just before his internment in Terezín — and first heard, in this live performance, only in 2010 — and three chamber pieces which evolve though echoes of Janáček and Martinů to the brittle humour of the Stravinskyan Verses, one of his last works.

Sebastian Foron, cello
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, orchestra
Zdeněk Mácal, conductor
Matti Raekallio, piano