4260085531448

Tal: Works For Viola

Hartmut Rohde

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Format: CD

Cat No: AVI8553144

Release Date:  03 August 2018

Label:  C-Avi

Packaging Type:  Digipak

No of Units:  1

Barcode:  4260085531448

Genres:  Classical  Chamber Music  

  • Description

    Josef Tal was an Israeli composer and a student of Paul Hindemith. His music, more than 100 works, is not well known and the the viola works are mainly unrecorded. Hartmut Rohde, a Professor at the Royal Academy in London, performs these viola works with accompanist Christian Selbert.



    "When the Berlin Academy of the Arts asked if I would agree to participate in a recital along with Josef Tal and learn his two works for viola and piano under his guidance, I was thrilled. At the Berlin University of the Arts I knowingly and willingly place myself in the tradition of the most influential musicians of the 1920s: for me as a violist, Paul Hindemith, Tal's teacher, is always present as one of our greatest composition teachers. In 1995 we organized a large-scale international Hindemith Festival, during which almost all of Hindemith's compositions featuring the viola were performed.



    This made me want to become better acquainted with works by Hindemith's pupils and his entourage. Tal was one of Hindemith's most well-known students, and one of those who most consistently took the master's ideas a step further. He also became a committed, fascinating trailblazer in the field of electronic music (in which Hindemith had already started experimenting in the late 1920s at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, the forerunner of our University of the Arts). Josef Tal initiated the Centre for Electronic Music in Israel in 1961 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; at that time, he was one of the country's leading, most well-known composers.



    I met Josef Tal when he was 94 years old. Our encounter was like a journey into an unsettling past, marked by a great number of hardships and upheavals he had personally endured. It also offered a revealing glimpse into the outlook of composers in Israel, as well as previously in Germany – even into compositional approaches from many eras he did not live through himself.



    Throughout our collaboration, Josef Tal proved to be a great thinker: not just an analyst, but also an interpreter who consistently sought to bring out the emotional aspect in music. He ascribed a decisive role to that which lies "between the notes". I like to call such an approach Durchhoren, i.e. "hearing through the music". It can open many marvellous avenues for the performer, particularly in music which does not seem emotional or Romantic at first glance." Hartmut Rohde

  • Tracklisting

      Disc 1

      Side 1

      • 1. Tal: Suite for Viola solo (1940) - Massige Achtel
      • 2. Tal: Suite for Viola solo (1940) - Langsame Achtel
      • 3. Tal: Suite for Viola solo (1940) - Tango
      • 4. Tal: Suite for Viola solo (1940) - Postludium
      • 5. Tal: Perspective for Viola solo (1996)
      • 6. Tal: Sonata for Viola and Piano (1960)
      • 7. Tal: Duo for Viola and Piano (1965)