NI 5729 Karl Amadeus Hartmann Quite apart from these circumstantial resemblances, the overall layout of the Second Quartet is remarkably similar to that the First, almost as if the composer was revisiting the Hanns Eisler same formal paradigm from a standpoint of much greater experience. Once again there are three movements in the sequence fast-slow-fast, the first of them prefaced by a substantial slow introduction. The designs are broader, the melodic writing richer, than in the earlier String Quartets work. Hartmann’s language is now more unified: although a certain ‘Bartókian’ tang may occasionally be heard, it is more of an allusion than a model. The texture of the music is more consistently polyphonic – early Schoenberg, Berg and Hindemith have all played their part in its formation, but the voice, the tone, and above all the rhythmic dynamism are entirely Hartmann’s own. As in Quartet No.1, a solo instrument (in this case the cello) begins the proceedings in the slow introduction, this time more melodically expressive, with a kind of aria of lament. The other instruments’ response is gentle, almost berceuse-like despite the suppressed intensity of the harmony, growing into a chorale-like utterance. The Allegro which follows, a new essay in Hartmann’s toccata-like vein, is spiky and capricious, but determined in mood and worked out with great seriousness. The central movement bears the tempo-marking Andantino - which is misleading, although it goes some way to reflect the deeply lyrical nature of the opening melody. In essence this deeply-felt and long-breathed movement, very different in orientation from the fragmented, semi-Expressionist ‘con sordino’ of the First Quartet, is a kind of symphonic Adagio, testifying to Hartmann’s expressive roots in Bruckner and Mahler, not least in the masterful control of harmonic tension and relaxation and the placing of the very intense crowning climax. The finale (again, as in Quartet No.1) returns to the style and matter of the Allegro section of the first movement. Here motoric rhythm and a burgeoning lyric impulse create an unmistakably tragic conflict, a dilemma upon whose horns the music remains transfixed, even while providing an exciting and cathartic outcome, issuing at last in a furiously rhythmic coda. As Hartmann once said: ‘… a very important consideration for me is envisaging the effect of the finished work: the whole should represent an absolute slice of life: truth brings joy and is linked to mourning’. © 2001 Calum MacDonald

Recorded by Nimbus Records at Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, U.K. February 19th - 21st 2001 P 2004 Wyastone Estate Limited © 2004 Wyastone Estate Limited. Photo: © Kasskara Vogler Quartett 8 NI 5729 NI 5729

humour or sentiment. There is no obscurity in Eisler’s serialism: despite the sometimes dense HARTMANN & EISLER polyphonic textures, the principal melodic material is always clear, with a direct, ‘speaking’ quality. What the music shares with Hartmann is its restless spirit, its exhaustive development of its own materials. VOGLER QUARTETT BERLIN The variation-movement begins with the basic row (and theme) stated by solo cello. As Tim Vogler & Frank Reinecke, violins variation succeeds variation it is heard in augmentation and diminution, in inversion and retrograde, but never without strong expressive effect, working up from the deliberately- Stefan Fehlandt, viola paced opening to an angular, virtuosically rapid figuration and then somewhat relaxing into a slower, quieter concluding section. The finale starts with something of a stylized dance- Stephan Forck, cello character, like a Schoenbergian minuet. (The main tune, indeed, seems a distant descendant of the finale theme of Mozart’s C minor Piano Concerto, K.491.) Its poise is soon banished by a further bout of restless polyphonic activity. In rondo-like fashion, the dance-tune several times Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) tries to reassert itself, but it is continually thwarted by the contrapuntally involved and much String Quartet No.1 ‘Carillon’ (1934) 21.52 more rhythmically lively episodes. In the coda, however, the dance tune is allowed to have the 1 I Langsam - Sehr lebhaft 8.12 last word, presented at last almost with affection, the rhythmic motion running down until the 2 II con sordino 6.55 music simply comes to a stop. Hartmann’s String Quartet No.2 was composed in 1945-6, following upon the defeat of 3 III 6.45 Germany by the Allies: in a sense, it could be said that his two quartets ‘frame’ the Third Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) Reich. He began it immediately after completing his Second Piano Sonata, subtitled ‘27. April String Quartet Op.73 (1937) 13.36 1945’, with its funeral-march slow movement depicting the trudging lines of inmates released from Dachau concentration camp. Although the Quartet contains no such pictorial allusion to 4 I Variationen 5.36 events, its mood is clearly influenced by them. (Hartmann dedicated it to his wife Elisabeth, 5 II Finale: Allegretto con spirito 8.00 his partner through all the tribulations and dangers of the war years.) The element of protest is still palpable – and if it might be thought otiose after the return of democracy to West Karl Amadeus Hartmann German, we should recall that Hartmann wrote to Hermann Scherchen in 1947 that ‘… the String Quartet No.2 (1945) 28.48 Nazi spirit continues to flourish among us. … The lot of the antifacist is a hard one, and it is 6 I Langsam - äußerst lebhaft und sehr energisch 9.40 fortunate that we are under occupation; otherwise they would all be at each others’ throats’. 7 II Andantino - sehr ausdruckvoll 12.55 In turn, Quartet No.2 prepared the way for two of his most eloquent and passionate works: the large-scale Adagio for orchestra which he numbered as his Second Symphony, and the 8 III Presto 6.13 bravura Symphony for string orchestra which became his Fourth. In fact the Second Quartet Total playing time 64.16 would be Hartmann’s last completed chamber score: subsequently he would concentrate on larger forces. As with the First Quartet, there was a three-year hiatus before Quartet No.2 was performed, and again the premiere was given by the Végh Quartet, this time in Milan in 1949. 2 7 NI 5729 NI 5729 movement, only to subside very shortly into a soft passage of shadowy counterpoint. Indeed Strong contrasts, and equally strong parallels, mark the careers of those near contemporaries the whole movement – formally a kind of Rondo – is built around the contrast and opposition Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) and Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963). Eisler, born in Leipzig, of truculent, earthy dance-measures and strict but very fluid polyphonic writing, mainly in son of philosopher Rudolf Eisler, early embraced Marxism. Hartmann, born in Munich, son canon and fugato. The coda drives to a manic, feverish and highly rhythmic conclusion. and brother of painters, was much affected in his early political development by the events of Although one may sense that in this work the young composer has not completely the unsuccessful Workers’ Revolution in Bavaria that followed the collapse of the German transcended his influences, it is impossible to doubt the passionate creative urge and sheer monarchy at the end of World War I, and he remained an idealistic socialist. Eisler studied in boldness in handling the medium that powers the music from first bar to last. Nor can one, Vienna, but was decisively affected by his time as a private pupil of Schoenberg (with whom now, doubt the element of protest, both coded and uncoded, which establishes Hartmann the he often clashed on a personal and political level). Hartmann studied in Munich, and received quartet-writer upon similar territory to his Russian contemporary, Shostakovich. important encouragement from the conductor Hermann Scherchen, a natural ally of the Hanns Eisler wrote his sole String Quartet, op.73 in 1937, in New York City, where he had Schoenberg School. During World War 2, when already an experienced composer, Hartmann finally settled after five years of wandering. Exiled from Germany in the year that Hartmann submitted to a course of private tuition in Vienna by Schoenberg’s star pupil and acolyte wrote his First Quartet, he had travelled in Austria, France, Belgium, Holland, England, the Anton Webern (with whom he often disagreed on a personal and political level). USA, the USSR, Czechoslovakia and visited the front in the Spanish Civil War, lecturing and Eisler and Hartmann both emerged out of the late-Romantic and classical traditions to giving concerts, organizing proletarian culture groups, composing a stream of politically- write, in their early works, music that was both satirical and politically engaged. They both motivated vocal works, and beginning two of his most important compositions, the Deutsche equally admired the polyphonic mastery of J.S. Bach and the profound expressive irony of Sinfonie and the Lenin Requiem, both with texts by his long-time collaborator Bertolt Brecht. Mahler. They both turned, as the situation in Germany became ever more threatening, to The Quartet, by contrast, is the most ‘abstract’ work he had written in several years. He may serious works in large forms (in Hartmann’s case, symphony and opera). When the Nazis in one sense have viewed it as an exercise in technique, not least because he was about to came to power Eisler, a Jew and a Communist, became an exile, living eventually in the USA resume teaching composition after a long hiatus in that activity. But at his root Eisler was as until, after the War, he was deported – again as a Communist – during the McCarthyite witch- much a product of the Austro-German ‘great tradition’ from Bach to Schoenberg as any of his hunts. Hartmann remained in Germany but withdrew from public musical life; his works fellow Schoenberg pupils; he never lost his faith in firm technique, the value of solid were performed outside the country at modern music festivals but he remained an ‘inner contrapuntal work, and everything – including the new 12-note mehods – that he had learned exile’, in some danger of his life until after the war. Then, as one of the few internationally- from Schoenberg. His String Quartet aligns him once more in that tradition, though in recognized figures who had survived untainted by any collaboration with the Nazi regime, he characteristically trenchant and abbreviated form. Compared to Hartmann’s quartets it may became a vital figure in the rebuilding of (West) German musical life, especially through the seem more emotionally neutral, even less ‘popular’ in language (and thus also in strong Musica Viva concert series which he founded and ran for the rest of his life in Munich. He contrast to Eisler’s political cantatas and Agitprop songs). But it is all substance, without brought the previously-banned works of Bartók, Stravinsky and the Schoenberg School into rhetorical flourishes – the work of a composer who (just like Hartmann) worshipped J.S. general currency and provided a platform for the music of the young composers who came to Bach’s Art of Fugue. the fore in the late 1940s and early 1950s. When Eisler returned to Europe he settled, because Eisler’s Quartet has only two movements: a set of variations and a finale. He thus avoids of his Marxist convictions, in Stalinist East Germany, where he too became enormously the ‘drama’ of a sonata-style opening movement to create an equally-balanced form. Here is influential in re-stimulating musical life. The Berlin College of Music eventually bore his none of Hartmann’s ‘East European’ reference: the work is entirely Germanic, cast in the 12- name. note vocabulary of Schoenberg and Berg (both movements are built upon the same 12-tone In his own music Hartmann attempted a difficult synthesis of many different idioms, row), but it remains individual in tone: serious, almost sardonic, but with occasional shafts of including Expressionism and jazz stylization, into organic symphonic forms in the tradition of 6 3 NI 5729 NI 5729

Bruckner and Mahler. Eisler, who had balanced Expressionist and popular idioms throughout In a way it was appropriate that the First Quartet should be premiered by Hungarian his career, experienced problems in his East German eminence, trying to encourage modern performers, for Hartmann’s early compositions reveal – among many other influences – a music composed on principles of artistic rectitude while having to accommodate, and keen interest in contemporary Hungarian composers such as Bartók and Kodály. The apogee sometimes combat, reactionary criticism couched in ‘Socialist Realist’ terms from his political of this interest is represented by the young Hartmann’s 1930 Kammerkonzert for clarinet, string colleagues and masters. Dying within 18 months of each other, each composer left unfinished quartet and string orchestra, dedicated in homage to Zoltán Kodály and containing a central a major work critical of the directions modern society was taking (Hartmann’s Gesangsszene variation movement in unmistakable imitation of modern Hungarian idioms. The Quartet, aus Sodom und Gomorrah, Eisler’s Johann Faustus). written three years later, still bears distinct traces of this imaginative involvement, especially They will be remembered for their principled stands against Fascism, their importance in with Bartók, whose quartets of the 1920s offered an obvious model. But in the handling of reviving post-War German musical life, and their political engagement. This disc however extremely chromatic musical materials Hartmann also shows that he had studied such works explores their handling of the most seemingly ‘abstract’ of the classical forms: the string as the Lyric Suite of Alban Berg. quartet. And here a contrast is immediately apparent: Eisler was a master of small forms, This is most obvious at the very opening of the work: the first movement begins with a slow Hartmann of large. Eisler’s sole String Quartet, though of high quality, is hardly one of his introduction, led off by the viola, which plays a pensive chromatic line (nevertheless clearly most important works; Hartmann’s two Quartets occupy salient positions in his output. enough in F minor) with expressive sighing portamenti. This is something of a germinal cell for the entire work. As the other instruments enter, each takes up the subject in a different key, Although both composers were fastidious craftsmen, Hartmann was the more self-critical: while a subtle half-lit texture of glissandi, tremolandi and harmonics builds up a sense of not only is his output much smaller than Eisler’s but he discarded many works or revised tension and brittle foreboding. Brusquely, a furious Allegro sets in with toccata-like insistence them obsessively over the years. Thus when he prepared a list of his works towards the end - an early instance of the furioso style which became one of Hartmann’s trademarks. At once of his life he placed his String Quartet No.1 of 1933 at the beginning, as his ‘opus one’ – martial and dance-like, this tough but often defiantly ebullient music is very clearly discounting the fact that he had written several orchestral, chamber, instrumental and stage influenced by Bartók’s quartet-writing and even by East European melodic inflections. In this works during the preceding decade. Composed in the year that Hitler came to power (he once movement, a free synthesis of sonata and rondo form, Hartmann pushes the quartet medium referred to it as ‘a year of distress and hopelessness’), Quartet No.1 is nevertheless perhaps the to its contemporary limits in terms of harmony, texture and string technique. Its driving first score in which Hartmann’s musical personality appears fully formed, in a characteristic rhythms and heavy accents only occasionally relent to reveal fluid contrapuntal invention in posture of elegy and defiance. In many respects the piece already foreshadows Hartmann’s fugato style; otherwise it keeps up the tension until the terse, percussive ending. most famous work, the Concerto funebre for violin and strings. He attributed this crucial stage The ‘con sordino’ Adagio begins with signals in harmonics, like nocturnal gleams, and an in his musical evolution to the advice and encouragement of Hermann Scherchen, and it is to insistent, melancholy recitative from the cello, stressing the dolorous interval of the falling Scherchen that the Quartet is dedicated. It lay unplayed for three years, until in 1936 semitone. (In fact this ‘recitative’ quotes a Jewish theme, under the noses, as it were, of the Hartmann entered the score for a competition sponsored by the ‘Carillon’ chamber music Nazi censors.) In a transitional passage all four instruments move together in whispered, society of Geneva. The jury – which included such leading contemporary figures as Ernest murmuring homophony and close harmony, with glassy sul ponticello sonorities. The second Ansermet, Gian Francesco Malipiero and Albert Roussel – awarded him the first prize and the violin takes the lead in a tiny, solemn folk-dance episode. The recitative returns, the cello work was premiered by the already-famous Hungarian string quartet led by Sandor Végh. It reinforced by first violin, and the movement ends with a kind of chiming alternation of high was the start of Hartmann’s international career, and the Quartet was heard again at the 1938 harmonics and low chord like deep bells - the only music in the work which might justify, ISCM Festival in London. As published by Schott of Mainz, it bore the subtitle Carillon which before the fact, the title ‘Carillon’. has been attached to it ever since. The finale is a dance-like rondo that resumes the furious ‘alla Ungarese’ idiom of the first 4 5 HARTMANN • EISLER • STRING QUARTETS Nimbus VOGLER QUARTETT BERLIN NI 5729 cello viola violins Stephan Forck, Stephan Forck, Stefan Fehlandt, Stefan Fehlandt, Tim Vogler & Frank Reinecke, & Frank Tim Vogler VOGLER QUARTETT BERLIN VOGLER QUARTETT 2004 Wyastone Estate Limited P Photo: © Kasskara Made in the UK by Nimbus Records © 2004 Wyastone Estate Limited http://www.wyastone.co.uk LC 5871 Karl Amadeus Hartmann Karl String Quartet No.2 (1945) playing timeTotal 28.48 64.16 Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) Amadeus Hartmann Karl No.1 ‘Carillon’ (1934)String Quartet 21.52 Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) String Quartet Op.73 (1937) 13.36 8 5 3 6 4 1 HARTMANN & EISLER HARTMANN Quartets String

HARTMANN • EISLER • STRING QUARTETS Nimbus VOGLER QUARTETT BERLIN NI 5729