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Thomas de Hartmann Rediscovered: Violin & Cello Concertos

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Label: Pentatone

Cat No: PTC5187076

Barcode: 8717306260763

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Orchestral

Release Date: 16th August 2024

Works

Hartmann, Thomas de

Cello Concerto, op.57
Violin Concerto, op.66

Artists

Joshua Bell (violin)
Matt Haimovitz (cello)
INSO-Lviv National Symphony Orchestra
MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra

Conductors

Dalia Stasevska
Dennis Russell Davies

Works

Hartmann, Thomas de

Cello Concerto, op.57
Violin Concerto, op.66

Artists

Joshua Bell (violin)
Matt Haimovitz (cello)
INSO-Lviv National Symphony Orchestra
MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra

Conductors

Dalia Stasevska
Dennis Russell Davies

About

This album brings the glowing, cinematic Violin and Cello Concertos of Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann, an important compositional voice in his own time, back into the limelight. Using an international all-star cast, the recording not only aims to re-establish de Hartmann’s oeuvre, but also to bring musicians together in times of war. The Violin Concerto was recorded in Warsaw with Joshua Bell as soloist and Dalia Stasevska conducting the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra, managing to temporarily leave their besieged country. The Cello Concerto is presented by Matt Haimovitz and the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Dennis Russell Davies. This album is made possible by the dedication and generous support of the Thomas de Hartmann Project, aimed to reintroduce his colourful and compelling music.

Sound/Video

Paused

1

Violin Concerto, op.66 (1943): 1. Largo – Allegro
2

Violin Concerto, op.66 (1943): 2. Andante
3

Violin Concerto, op.66 (1943): 3. Menuet fantasque (Tempo do Minuetto)
4

Violin Concerto, op.66 (1943): 4. Finale. Vivace
5

Cello Concerto, op.57 (1935): 1. Allegro con brio
6

Cello Concerto, op.57 (1935): 2. Andante. Solenne
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Cello Concerto, op.57 (1935): 3. Finale. Allegro ma non troppo

Europadisc Review

For most musicians and music lovers, the surname Hartmann brings to mind – if anyone – Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905–1963), the post-Bergian German symphonist. But another has, until recently, been lurking neglected in the shadows: Thomas de Hartmann (1884–1956) was born in Khoruzhivka, northern Ukraine, studied with Arensky and Taneyev, and – after a brief military stint in the Russian Imperial Guard – enjoyed a richly varied musical career as composer and conductor. In pre-World War I Munich he forged a lifelong friendship with the painter Wassily Kandinsky, and was even a member of the Blaue Reiter Group, contributing to its Almanac. Back in St Petersburg during the war, he began a collaboration with the mystic philosopher and composer George Gurdjieff.

At the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution, the two fled across the Caucasus, eventually making it to Paris, where Gurdjieff established his Institute from the Harmonious Development of Man in 1922. By the late 1920s de Hartmann began writing film scores, which kept him financially sustained until the mid-1930s, and broke with Gurdjieff. There followed a period of burgeoning creativity which saw him produce symphonies, concertos, ballets (his first notable success in the genre, La Fleurette rouge, dated back to 1907), and even an opera. De Hartmann’s works were played and championed by such figures as Marcel Moyse, Paul Tortelier, Casals and Koussevitsky. He and his wife Olga remained in the environs of Paris until emigrating to the United States in 1950, where he died of a heart attack in Princeton on 28 March 1956.

Throughout his life, de Hartmann retained strong memories of his Ukrainian homeland, which seeped into much of his music. The current revival of interest in his music – long overdue – predates the present Ukraine conflict, and is down to the Thomas de Hartmann Project, an act of single-minded devotion on the part of pianist Elan Sicroff and executive director Robert Fripp. Already it has resulted in discs of chamber works, piano music and songs on the Nimbus Alliance label, as well as three discs of orchestral works played by the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra (for Nimbus Alliance and Toccata Classics).

The latest disc of de Hartmann’s music, masterminded by Efrem Marder, comes from the Pentatone label, and contains two of the composer’s most impressive concertante works, the Violin Concerto of 1943 and the Cello Concerto of 1935 (the latter premiered in 1938 by the young Tortelier with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Koussevitsky). Both are ambitiously-scored, large-scale pieces, and you could hardly ask for more persuasive or committed champions than violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Matt Haimovitz.

In the Cello Concerto, Haimovitz is joined by the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Dennis Russell Davies, recorded in Leipzig’s Gewandhaus in May 2022. The 35-minute work is dominated by its 20-minute-long first movement, which opens with an expansive, luxuriant orchestral introduction, before the cello takes centre-stage with a rhapsodic cadenza. Once the orchestra re-enters, the music soon gathers momentum in strains evocative of east European soulfulness, taking advantage of the soloist’s full range and including passages of challenging (and superbly executed) double-stopping. The long development section brings quick changes of mood and tempo, and the repose found in the recapitulation is hard-won but radiant, before a bracing coda.

At the time of the Concerto’s composition, storm clouds were already gathering over Europe, and the concentrated but increasingly intense slow movement, marked Andante. Solenne, evokes (in de Hartmann’s words) ‘the praying of the Jews, having endured everything except their God’. The catchy 5/8 finale, meanwhile, captures ‘the [Biblical] image of the dancing Rachel.’ Haimovitz is a wonderfully animated advocate of this impressive score, keenly partnered by the Leipzig Radio players under Russell Davies’s sure-footed direction.

No less compelling is the Violin Concerto, in which Joshua Bell is joined by the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra and Dalia Stasevska, in a recording made (by necessity of circumstances) in Warsaw in January this year. The Concerto was written during the Nazi occupation of France, and the present situation in Ukraine gives the performance an extra expressive edge. Again, the work – this time in four movements – is dominated by an extended first movement, this time with a brooding slow introduction introduced by a succession of mysteriously inviting, carefully-blended wind chords before the solo violin makes its anguished first appearance. A folk-like transitional passage leads to a lively Allegro with nimble passagework for the soloist and oppressive tuttis. The main body of the movement is driven by the contrast between these two moods, but finds repose in the exquisite coda.

The Andante second movement begins by alternating prayerful solo passages underpinned by rich strings with Lark Ascending-like arabesques, and settles into an idiom not so far from Bartók, an association reinforced by the gently folksy Menuet fantasque for soloist and muted strings, the pizzicato accompaniment of its outer sections changing to drones for the very brief trio section. This is a jewel of a movement, and one can imagine it being taken up as an effective encore. The Vivace finale is again folk-infused, energetic and defiant in the face of oppression, with unmistakable references to the traditional music of the old Russian empire of de Hartmann’s youth, its sparklingly virtuosic solo writing made to sound effortless by Bell.

Like the Cello Concerto, the Violin Concerto is both a first commercial recording and a real find. With excellent recording (the orchestra a tad more recessed in the latter work, but always wonderfully attentive under Stasevska’s direction) and detailed documentation, this disc should give de Hartmann’s music a well-deserved shot in the arm. Complete with Kandinsky’s Intersecting Lines (1923) on the cover, it’s strongly recommended!

Reviews

De Hartmann’s eclectic, passionate music, written in a Paris suburb during the French Occupation, blends echoes of Ukrainian folk songs, the Jewish synagogue, and the French Impressionist composers. ... This is a most attractive album, and should do de Hartmann’s cause much good. It won’t hurt Joshua Bell either.

The Times

Of the two, the violin concerto is unquestionably the stronger work, composed during the Nazi occupation and intended by Hartmann as a lament for the devastation that war had brought to his native Ukraine. Recorded in Warsaw with the International Symphony Orchestra Lviv conducted by Dalia Stasevska, it gets a powerfully intense performance from Joshua Bell. Andrew Clements

The Guardian 23 August 2024