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Wartime Consolations
Mieczysław Weinberg, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Dmitri Shostakovich

Linus Roth / Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn / José Gallardo

Wartime Consolations

Price: € 20.95
Format: SACD
Label: Challenge Classics
UPC: 0608917268027
Catnr: CC 72680
Release date: 22 May 2015
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Label
Challenge Classics
UPC
0608917268027
Catalogue number
CC 72680
Release date
22 May 2015

"''Lovers from the more tonal work of the last century will definitely find their passion. This album is a, a dark, a  sharp and original production: great.''"

Klassiek Centraal, 03-12-2016
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About the album

Karl Amadeus Hartmann: The Art of Mourning
“On every portrait of Karl Amadeus Hartmann—whether painted by his brother Adolf or on one of the numerous photographs—you notice the striking, radiant eyes of the composer” writes Klaus Kalchschmid about the composer. “They reflect the vast curiosity that shaped Hartmann throughout his life, but also his vulnerability. It also indicates an openness with which Hartmann challenged his friends and colleagues around him.”
This vulnerability and openness shows in his music, which seems to confess, to mourn, and to plea in timeless, consonant ways. The communicative aspect was important to Hartmann, who was not interested in academic exercises. (And in fact he was asked, by an exacerbated professor, to suspend composition classes in favor of the trombone at the conservatory.) “While I work, I am also preoccupied with the effect of a work as a whole: The whole ought to represent a piece of absolute life—truth that spreads joy and is connected to grief… I don’t want disimpassioned intellectualisms but a work of art with a statement.”
Hartmann was the student of Anton Webern, an admirer of Arnold Schoenberg, and a liberal quoter from Alban Berg, but he was anything but a mindless disciple of the 12-tone cult: “Those who compose slavishly in acquiescent dependency on tone rows can certainly crank their bits out at a nice clip. But… you cannot just skirt the burden of tradition by replacing old forms with new ones. We have to accept that our path has become more difficult than that of our great idols before us.” Hartmann consequently developed a musical voice that makes him one of great if lamentably unsung composers of the 20th century.
Of the composers who were among the many secondary victims of the Third Reich—shunted, not gassed—and the subsequent shift in musical ideology (also including Walter Braunfels, Wolfgang Fortner, Boris Blacher, Reinhard Schwarz-Schilling et al.), Hartmann was probably the most successful after the war, for the short 18 years he lived after 1945. His music evokes a dazzling, heterogeneous array of other composers—one of the surest signs of the total originality that marks Hartmann. From Karol Szymanowski or Alban Berg’s violin concertos, Ravel’s La valse or Sibelius’ Andante Festivo, to the darker, edgier tones of Eduard Tubin, Allan Pettersson, or Bernd Alois Zimmermann, there’s little that could not be said to remind of Hartmann here and there.
Hartmann thoroughly abandoned and occasionally destroyed or extensively reworked his early compositions which he found too dated or tailored too closely to trends of the time. Only his two string quartets, containing kernels of later echt-Hartmann, are exempt from such harsh judgment. His first success, premiered by his mentor and friend Hermann Scherchen, was Miserae, his first symphonic work (and indeed for some time called Symphony No.1), which he would eventually incorporate into his Sixth Symphony. The next great work, a pivot of his composing career, was the Violin Concerto.

Concerto funebre
The Concerto funebre began life in a particularly dark period of Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s. Freedom, indeed humanity, seemed under siege in the late summer of 1939. The Nazis had Germany in their grip for six years. Books had been burned, pogroms incited, Jews expelled or incarcerated, intellectuals cowed; art that didn’t suit the rulers was declared degenerate and of unGerman spirit. The demilitarized Rhineland had been occupied and the Wehrmacht invaded Poland on September 1st. A little over a month later Poland capitulated. If humanity was not yet quite at the brink of defeat—annihilation even—it would be, just a few years later, and the writing was on the wall for those who wanted to see it.
For less sensitive people, doubts were drowned out by the propaganda clanking and clinking that accompanied the country’s initial military successes. This was the added perniciousness for those who opposed the regime and everything that went with it. Hartmann’s creative will was undermined by doubts amid an aggressive burgeoning and embrace of mediocrity all around him. But withdrawn into inner immigration, and refusing to have his works performed in Germany, Hartmann was fuelled by the determination that “freedom [would] prevail, even if we ourselves were destroyed.” In this climate, still two years before he attained a glimmer of happiness amid the darkness— the time he spent with Anton Webern between 1941 and 1942 and their ensuing friendship—Hartmann set out to write a funereal piece for string orchestra in one movement. Just a few months later it had morphed into the four-movement Violin Concerto—the Concerto funebre.
The “Violin-Concertino”—as the German composer and music theorist Winfried Zillig refers to it—is such a profound and deeply personal musical statement that it communicates this with moving immediacy to the listener even today… inconceivably far removed though we are from the events and the circumstances of Hartmann’s war-time Germany. It was “a counterpoint of profound mourning to the hysterical jubilations during the Polish campaign” (Zillig). The work received its premiere on leap day, 1940, by the St. Gallen Chamber Orchestra in the presence of the composer and his three brothers, who all made the trip to reasonably neutral Switzerland. Except for a long-lost bit of incidental music (presumably composed to retain a claim to royalties from abroad), it would be his last composition for the duration of the war.
The first movement of the Concerto is essentially a long solo part, accentuated by the orchestra. Hope enters into it in its form of determination. It has a stubborn air, force calm, with willful slow, regular breathing. The second movement, by turn, shows nervous anguish and dejection, anger and futility side by side. A glimmer of Wagner may shine through, and there is a serene, coolly searing sadness. The third movement strikes as ghoulish at first hearing, more than hopeful, with parallels to Shostakovich, except with Hartmann’s skill for a natural slow movement’s flow (Hartmann will sneak a slow movement even within a movement titled Allegro di molto) that is more akin to Haydn. The link to Shostakovich comes back in the short final movement, Chorale, which is based on a funeral march for the victims of the Russian Revolution that Hermann Scherchen set to German: The opening melody of “Unsterbliche Opfer” (“Immortal Victims”) also pops up in Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony.
And then the final chord comes in, as unsettling and cruel as anything in classical music, prohibiting any sort of resolution, comfort, or closure: an open, darkly perturbing end, despite all the hope therein. Christoph Schlüren pithily got to its core, describing its idiom—the whole work’s, but it’s particularly befitting the fourth movement—as that of “a soul famished for a beauty vanished; wrapped in mourning’s garb.”
The Concerto would also become one of the first public performances of Hartmann’s after the war, when it was presented in October of 1945 at a matinee of the Munich State Theater. He went on to revise the Concerto in 1959 (which is when it got the name under which it’s now known), but unlike the story of so many of his works, which is one of seemingly continuous morphing and re-creation, the Concerto funebre has a straightforward and linear editorial life from perception to revision.
Hans Werner Henze, a young friend of Hartmann’s, wrote about the joy and surprise of meeting Hartmann after war—unknown to him because of Hartmann’s tenacious silence during that time; of finding “someone who could compose so marvelously—and so completely different than anyone else in the entire country.” It remains such a joy, still, when the ears happen upon a composer who can compose so marvelously—and so completely different than anyone else! Karl Amadeus Hartmann succumbed to cancer on December 5th, 1963, on the day exactly 172 years after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died.

The Bright Side of Weinberg
Mieczysław Weinberg was born in Warsaw in 1919, son to Shmil Weinberg, a composer and conductor at the Yiddish theater in Kishinev. Shmil moved to Warsaw before the 1917 October Revolution broke out. There he sought refuge from the increasingly hostile climate for Jews in Kishinev that included deadly pogroms in 1903 and 1905, which had counted members of the Weinberg family among its victims. This is the prelude to prosecution that would be the reoccurring theme in Mieczysław’s life.
The young man soon showed musical talent and at twelve entered the Warsaw Conservatory which was then headed by Karol Szymanowski. He had just completed his piano studies in 1939, when German troops attacked Poland: Weinberg, accompanied by his sister, fled eastward. Facing the hardships of the flight on foot, his sister made the ultimately fatal decision of turning back to Warsaw where she, along with the rest of Weinberg’s family, would be murdered by the Nazis.
Weinberg trekked on, reached the Soviet Union, and settled in the erstwhile safety of Minsk. But the German war machine was soon on the move again— and Weinberg, suffering from tuberculosis, was now relocated deep into central Asia, to Tashkent in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. There he found work at the opera house, met his wife Natalia Vovsi-Mikhoels, and got in touch with Dmitri Shostakovich whom he sent a copy of his First Symphony. Shostakovich, much impressed, immediately arranged for Weinberg to receive an official invitation to travel to Moscow. It was the beginning of a musical friendship and the last time Weinberg had to move—although he was hardly safe from prosecution yet, as he would soon find out.
He got a first taste of it when on January 12, 1948 Weinberg’s father in law, the celebrated Yiddish actor Solomon Mikhoels, was murdered on Stalin’s order and his body then run over by a truck to feign a traffic accident. Weinberg heard about it while he had to listen to attacks on “cosmopolitanism” at the First Soviet Composers’ Union Congress in 1948. “Cosmopolitanism” of course being ominous Soviet-speak for “too Jewish”. That was the year when Weinberg first took to the concerto form, writing his Concertino for Violin and Strings while on summer holidays. It isn’t clear whether Weinberg thought of it as a practice piece or was distracted by the more substantial Cello Concerto in similar lyrical vain that followed right after, but there is no record of the work being performed in his lifetime. Indeed, the Concertino wasn’t published until a decade after Weinberg’s death and only received its premiere outside Russia in 2009.
Its lyrical sweep (subtly guarded by a wistful air against any joyous excess) and its tender gracefulness are magnificent. Just as Weinberg’s music can contain, all the dark tones notwithstanding, true humor (take his Children’s Notebooks for piano, for example)—which is something that distinguishes it from the biting irony that Shostakovich musters in his attempts at the comic—its beauty can be equally untroubled. In view of such a dose of late romanticism from Weinberg, one almost wonders if he mightn’t have gone too far in trying not to offend the authorities or if that might have been the reason for the gorgeous work not seeing the light of day.
Right around the same time, and equally of (partially) upbeat and romantic disposition is the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes op.47. On the surface of it, the Rhapsody seems an attempt at balancing his musical energy with the expectations and dictations of Soviet officialdom. Perhaps it was, and he thought strictly of his mother’s homeland when working on this rousing miscellany of tunes and themes that doesn’t sound so differently from what the Georgian Aram Khachaturian composed at the time. And Khachaturian was, although also briefly denounced at the same congress, a respected and sanctioned composer after all. In any case, the purely orchestral version of the Rhapsody was performed a year later and enjoyed great success, so great that Weinberg also set it for violin and orchestra (as performed on this disc, in Ewelina Nowicka’s re-arrangement) and violin and piano, which David Oistrakh premiered in February of 1953 and included among his encores. “The Rhapsody’s bittersweet touches never dominate and while some of the seamlessly joined episodes hint at melancholy, there’s always an impending energy and a raw, uplifting—if not outright joyous—force that sweeps the listener on. Although the Rhapsody is a rare rousing, lighter work of Weinberg’s, guile and disguise seem to be at work here, too. Those “Moldavian” themes are, after all, decidedly Jewish themes from Moldavia… something Weinberg knew better than to advertise openly, after the still recent attacks on his “cosmopolitanism”.
In the continuing story of Weinberg’s life-imitation of Candide (minus the optimism), he was arrested the night after that chamber versions’ premiere and thrown into the infamous Lubyanka prison beneath the KGB headquarters where he awaited deportation (or worse). Shostakovich, at incalculable risk to himself, tried to intervene on Weinberg’s behalf. In the end it was more likely Stalin’s death than Shostakovich’s naïve heroics, that resulted in Weinberg being released in April. Weinberg went on to live almost another half century and composed works that, had they been more widely published and performed in his lifetime, would have made him one of the great voices of the second half of the 20th century. But his work would go on to be widely ignored, if not downright suppressed. When Weinberg died, he was virtually unknown, and understandably bitter. His fame will have to come (and it is coming) posthumously.
Because of his close connection with Shostakovich, Weinberg had and maybe still has to overcome suspicions of being simply a lesser Shostakovich, a darker, grim copy of the famous original. Weinberg contributed to the easy (mis-) perception of a slanted student-teacher relationship when he humbly suggested that he actually was a pupil of Shostakovich: “Although I have never had lessons from him, I count myself as his pupil, as his flesh and blood”. But Weinberg is neither lesser nor did he, though younger, copy Shostakovich any more than Shostakovich allowed himself to be influenced by Weinberg. In works like his mid-80s opera The Idiot—a work that surpasses even the high standard set by The Passenger—Weinberg eloquently, effortlessly fuses the musical language common to Shostakovich and Weinberg with that of the whole 20th century, from Gustav Mahler to Bernd Alois Zimmermann. At his most buoyant he sounds truly at ease, and there is no knout driving on the elation and vigor of the music. (This can be readily appreciated in his Violin Concerto op. 67, which Linus Roth recorded on Challenge CC 72627, a Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice.)
When Weinberg was completely unknown to most music lovers, I liked to introduce him thus: “Like Shostakovich, but without the smile.” There’s truth to every joke and simplification, but the works on this disc will make Weinbergsimplification more difficult and Weinberg-enjoyment still easier!

Shostakovich’s Unfinished
What a delight, surprise, and opportunity it must be, for a musician to find an unperformed, unrecorded, entirely or relatively unknown piece of music by a major composer, indeed by one of the Greats—Shostakovich in this case. And not just some piece of musical minutiae: an 8-bar, twelve stanza ode to the family dog by the nine-year old composer, or the adaptation for piano duo and accordion of something well grazed-over. No, what we have here is nothing less than Dmitri Shostakovich’s Unfinished Sonata for Violin and Piano—the complete and massive double exposition of the first movement of what would have been a grand-scale work along strict classical lines. Shostakovich wrote it in June of 1945, just before he wrote his defiantly anti-heroic Ninth Symphony. Manashir Iakubov writes in the introduction of the score, published by the Dmitri Shostakovich Archive in 2012, that the sonata-movement contains the kernels of much of what Shostakovich would go on to write. It contains a particularly strong link to the Tenth Symphony, in which Shostakovich would go on to recycle both themes of the exposition.
The work—at least the extant five, six minutes of it—eschews any sort of bravado and virtuosity. Rather, it harkens back to somber Beethoven if not further (this might be a stretch), to Bach. Then again maybe it isn’t such a stretch, because the Preludes and Fugues op. 87 come to mind several times and Iakubov sees fit to mention the influence of this ‘Violin Sonata No. 0’ on it as well. It was also Iakubov who showed the 250 bars of music (plus about two dozen of the beginning of the development section in the rough author’s manuscript) to Alfred Schnittke, in the hope that he would finish it. Schnittke commented on its symphonic proportions and how ‘such an extensive exposition with the contrast of remote keys (G minor and E major) would require an enormous development, the scope of which does not correspond to the chamber genre…’ If this is the reason why Shostakovich abandoned the work after making a neat fair manuscript of what he had written so far (replete with rehearsal numbers), we don’t know. But while we wait to find out, we can now listen to its satisfying calm glow thanks to this first ever recording of it.

Jens F. Laurson
20e-eeuwse vioolmuziek door Linus Roth
Na Linus Roths alom geprezen album van Britten en Weinberg vioolconcerten is dit een nieuw album van de meester-violist. Dit album is opgenomen met het Württemberg Chamber Orchestra onder leiding van Ruben Gazarian en met pianist José Gallordo. De titel luidt Wartime Consolations en bevat vier werken uit de jaren 1939 tot 1948 van Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Mieczysław Weinberg en Dmitri Sjostakovitsj. Met dit album combineert Roth opnieuw werken van bekende componisten met die van relatief onbekende componisten. Met name de onvoltooide vioolsonate van Sjostakovitsj is een bijzondere toevoeging, aangezien dit de eerste keer is dat dit stuk is opgenomen.

Het album opent met het Concerto Funebre van Hartmann. Dit vioolconcert werd gecomponeerd in een donkere periode in het leven van de componist in het midden van de Tweede Wereldoorlog in Duitsland. Na tijd doorgebracht te hebben met Anton Webern schreef Hartmann in 1942 een eendelig strijkorkest voor een begrafenis. Vier maanden later werkte hij dit stuk uit tot zijn Concerto Funebre. Het concert begint met een lange solopassage in het eerste deel, geaccentueerd door het orkest. Vervolgens ontwikkelt het zich tot een duister stuk vol angst en verdriet.
De twee werken van Weinberg zijn van een andere orde. De stukken volgen de laatromantische traditie met snelle passages en worden gekenmerkt door een combinatie van donkere passages met humorvolle zettingen van bekende melodieën.
Ten slotte presenteert Linus Roth een voorheen onbekend werk van Sjostakovitsj. De Russische componist schreef dit werk in 1945 vlak voor hij zijn bekende 9e Symfonie uitbracht. Pas in 2012 werd het middendeel van de vioolsonate gevonden door het Sjostakovitsj Archief. Helaas is het stuk incompleet, maar niettemin is deze sonate voor viool en piano een bijzonder voorbeeld van Sjostakovitsj' uitgebreide repertoire.
Welche Freude, Überraschung und Gelegenheit muss es für einen Musiker sein, ein noch nie gehörtes, noch nicht aufgenommenes, gänzlich oder relativ unbekanntes Werk eines großen Komponisten zu finden. Linus Roth lässt Sie teilhaben an dieser Freude, denn des ist keine geringere Komposition als Dmitrij Schostakowitschs unvollendete Sonate für Violine und Klavier, die auf dieser Veröffentlichung ihre Welterstaufnahme erfuhr. Ihr voran gehen zwei Werke Weinbergs, mit denen Roth nach der preisgekrönten Veröffentlichung von Brittens und Weinbergs Violinkonzerten seine Weinberg-Serie fortsetzt.

Eröffnet mit einem Konzert des deutschen Komponisten Karl Amadeus Hartmann ist dies eine CD, deren Werke äußerst sorgsam ausgewählt wurden. Sie umspannen lediglich ein Jahrzehnt (1939 – 1949), doch es ist ein Jahrzehnt voller Unruhe, Angst und Leid – ein Jahrzehnt, in dem die wundervolle Musik dieser Komponisten, deren Poesie sich so ähnlich ist, ein wenig Trost spendet.
Linus Roth prosegue la sua indagine sulla musica per violino di Weinberg, abbinando questa volta due brani con orchestra luminosi, coloriti e spettacolari (un Concertino e una Rapsodia) con il più cupo dei grandi concerti scritti durante il periodo bellico: quello di Hartmann. Come riempitivo (e che riempitivo!), la prima registrazione mondiale di un’incompiuta sonata per violino e pianoforte di Šostakovič.
« Che piacere, sorpresa e opportunità, per un musicista, trovare un brano musicale mai eseguito, inedito in disco, interamente o relativamente sconosciuto di un grande compositore, in effetti uno dei Grandi – nella fattispecie Šostakovič. Ciò che qui abbiamo è nientemeno che l’incompiuta Sonata per violino e pianoforte di Dmitrij Šostakovič – l’intera e imponente doppia esposizione del primo movimento di quello che avrebbe dovuto essere un’opera di grandi proporzioni, di stampo rigorosamente classico. Šostakovič l’abbozzò nel giugno del 1945. Nella prefazione all’edizione, pubblicata nel 2012 dall’Archivio Dmitrij Šostakovič, Manashir Iakubov scrive che il movimento di sonata presenta un legame particolarmente forte con la Decima Sinfonia, in cui Šostakovič arriverà a riciclare entrambi i temi dell’esposizione.»

Artist(s)

Linus Roth (violin)

Linus Roth, who received the ECHO KLASSIK Award as 'Best Newcomer' 2006 for his début CD on the label EMI, was awarded his second ECHO award in 2017 for his recording of the violin concertos by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky with the London Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Sanderling. Linus Roth has made a name for himself internationally, not just with his acclaimed work in core repertoire, but also with his discovery / rediscovery of works that have undeservedly fallen into oblivion.  He has devoted special attention to the works of Mieczysław Weinberg, both on the concert platform and the recording studio.  Roth's recording of the complete works for violin and piano by Mieczysław Weinberg, released in 2013 by Challenge Classics to wide...
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Linus Roth, who received the ECHO KLASSIK Award as 'Best Newcomer' 2006 for his début CD on the label EMI, was awarded his second ECHO award in 2017 for his recording of the violin concertos by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky with the London Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Sanderling.
Linus Roth has made a name for himself internationally, not just with his acclaimed work in core repertoire, but also with his discovery / rediscovery of works that have undeservedly fallen into oblivion. He has devoted special attention to the works of Mieczysław Weinberg, both on the concert platform and the recording studio. Roth's recording of the complete works for violin and piano by Mieczysław Weinberg, released in 2013 by Challenge Classics to wide public and critical acclaim was followed up by recordings of Weinberg’s Violin Concerto with the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester and his Concertino with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn. Both CDs were selected as 'Editor’s Choice' by Gramophone magazine. Making Mieczysław Weinberg’s oeuvre known to a wider audience is also the aim of the International Weinberg Society, which Linus Roth founded in 2015. This association organises and sponsors concerts, readings, exhibitions, interdisciplinary events and publications on the work and life of the Polish-Jewish composer. For the 100th anniversary of Weinberg’s birth in 2019, Linus Roth will curate two days of events dedicated to the composer in the form of six concerts at Wigmore Hall in London. In addition to chamber music works, all of Weinberg’s six sonatas for violin and piano as well as the three sonatas for solo violin will be played, including by Linus Roth himself.
Linus Roth has played as a soloist with many leading orchestras including the Stuttgart State Opera Orchestra, the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn, the German Radio Symphony Orchestras of broadcasters SWR and Berlin, the Orquesta de Cordoba, the Orchestra della Toscana in Florence, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Vienna Chamber Philharmonic, the Bern Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra del Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the Cologne Chamber Orchestra and the Bruckner Orchester Linz. Conductors with whom Roth has worked include Gerd Albrecht, Frank Beermann, Herbert Blomstedt, Andrey Boreyko, Finnegan Downie Dear, Dennis Russell Davies, Kevin John Edusei, Dan Ettinger, James Gaffigan, Hartmut Haenchen, Domonkos Héja, Antony Hermus, Manfred Honeck, Kirill Karabits, Isaac Karabtchevsky, Mihkel Kütson, Leo McFall, Thomas Sanderling, Konstantin Trinks, and Antoni Wit.
A passionate chamber musician, he has performed fellow musicians such as Nicolas Altstaedt, Gautier Capuçon, Kim Kashkashian, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Albrecht Mayer, Nils Mönkemeyer, Andreas Ottensamer, Benjamin Schmid, Christian Poltéra, Julian Steckel, Markus Schirmer, Julien Quentin, Jens-Peter Maintz, Florian Uhlig, Itamar Golan and Danjulo Ishizaka, among others. He has also worked closely for several years with the Argentinean pianist José Gallardo.
Linus Roth attended the preparatory class of Prof. Nicolas Chumachenco at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg, Germany, before going on to study with Prof. Zakhar Bron. Subsequently, he pursued his studies for several years with Prof. Ana Chumachenco at the Universities of Music in Zurich and Munich. Salvatore Accardo, Miriam Fried and Josef Rissin have also been important influences on him. During his studies, Linus Roth held a scholarship from the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation.
In October 2012, Linus Roth was appointed Professor of Violin at the 'Leopold-Mozart-Zentrum' at Augsburg University and is also the artistic director of the Leopold Mozart International Violin Competition in Augsburg. In addition, Linus Roth is the Founder and Artistic Director of the International Festival Ibiza Concerts and from 2020 on of the music festival Schwäbischer Frühling in Ochsenhausen /Germany Linus Roth plays the Stradivarius violin 'Dancla' from 1703 on kind loan from the music foundation of the L-Bank Baden-Württemberg.
In his free time, Roth enjoys fitness sports of all kinds, travelling, eating out and loves boating around the Mediterranean. He has lived in Munich for many years.


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Ruben Gazarian (conductor)

For sixteen years – from 2002 to 2018 – Ruben Gazarian was the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn. Both the orchestra and the search committee elected him unanimously. In more than 860 concerts and 26 CD productions of this time, he enriched the standard repertory of the orchestra by occasionally expanding it to symphonic dimensions and by selecting numerous works from the Romantic and early modern eras as well as from the avant-garde. In recognition of his achievements during the long Heilbronn tenure, he was awarded the Golden Coin of the city in 2018. In addition to his Heilbronn position, at the beginning of 2015 Ruben Gazarian became the Artistic Director of the Georgian Chamber...
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For sixteen years – from 2002 to 2018 – Ruben Gazarian was the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn. Both the orchestra and the search committee elected him unanimously. In more than 860 concerts and 26 CD productions of this time, he enriched the standard repertory of the orchestra by occasionally expanding it to symphonic dimensions and by selecting numerous works from the Romantic and early modern eras as well as from the avant-garde. In recognition of his achievements during the long Heilbronn tenure, he was awarded the Golden Coin of the city in 2018.
In addition to his Heilbronn position, at the beginning of 2015 Ruben Gazarian became the Artistic Director of the Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt. In the same manner, this appointment arose from the unanimous wish of the orchestra, its management and the cultural representatives of the city. In May 2017, the contract between the Georgian Chamber Orchestra and Ruben Gazarian was extended by another three years. In advance, the orchestra expressed its unanimous support for the renewal of the contract.
As guest conductor Ruben Gazarian has directed such renowned orchestras as the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, the WDR-Sinfonieorchester Köln, hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, the Kassel State Theater Orchestra, the Deutsches-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra (Frankfurt Opera Orchestra), the Hessian State Orchestra Wiesbaden, the Southwest Philharmonic Konstanz, the Northwest German Philharmonic Herford, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra Rishon LeZion (Tel Aviv Opera Orchestra), the Wroclaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Zurich Chamber Orchestra and many others.
He also conducted numerous live and studio recordings for the Southwest German Broadcasting Corporation (SWR, Südwestrundfunk), the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation (HR, Hessischer Rundfunk), the West German Broadcasting Corporation (WDR, Westdeutscher Rundfunk), Deutschlandradio, the Central German Broadcasting Corporation (MDR, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk), Radio Svizzera Italiana, Radio France Musique, Radio Denmark (DR, Danmarks Radio) and others.
Gazarian works successfully with acclaimed musicians such as Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Julia Fischer, Hilary Hahn, Katia & Marielle Labèque, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Sabine Meyer, Viktoria Mullova, Sergey Nakariakov, Gerhard Oppitz, Fazil Say, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Emmanuel Tjeknavorian, Frank Peter Zimmermann, the Beaux Arts Trio, the Gewandhaus-Quartet and several others.
The rich discography of the past years documents the extent of Gazarians repertoire and the quality of his interpretations, born of meticulous rehearsal work, profound emotional understanding and firm mastery over a broad range of periods and styles.
Ruben Gazarians musical education began quite early. His father gave him his first violin lessons at the age of four. He was educated at the music college P.I. Tchaikovsky and studied further at the National Conservatoire in Yerevan, where one of his teachers was Ruben Aharonian, the first violinist of the famous Borodin Quartet.
His career as a performer started in 1983, with recitals, chamber music and soloist appearances with chamber and symphonic orchestras.
In 1990 Ruben Gazarian became the violinist of the piano trio of the State Radio of Armenia – the youngest violinist ever in the ensemble’s history. In addition to its numerous concerts at home and abroad, the trio made a number of recordings for the archives of radio and television.
In 1991, Gazarian was appointed first violinist and soloist of the National Chamber Orchestra of Armenia.
In October 1992, he entered the Leipzig Conservatoire (Hochschule für Musik und Theater Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy) for a postgraduate violin study, concluded it in 1995 with the obligatory concert performance, after which he registered for the curriculum of orchestra conducting, graduating in May 1998 with first-class honors.
From 1993 to 1998, Gazarian held the position of the first concertmaster of the Westsächsisches Symphonieorchester (Symphonic Orchestra of Western Saxony). In 1999, he was appointed principal conductor of this same orchestra after a long selection process, thus becoming Germany’s youngest principal conductor at the time, a position he kept until the summer of 2002.
Shortly before taking up his position in Heilbronn in September 2002, Ruben Gazarian became a laureate of the first “Sir Georg Solti” international conducting competition in Frankfurt am Main.

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José Gallardo (piano)

A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, José Gallardo started piano lessons at the age of five, at first at the Conservatory in Buenos Aires. Later he continued his studies with Prof. Poldi Mildner in the Faculty of Music at the University of Mainz, completing his diploma in 1997. Even then he realised his first love would be for chamber music. His musical inspiration came from such artists as Menahem Pressler, Alfonso Montecino, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Sergiu Celibidache, Rosalyn Tureck and Bernard Greenhouse. José Gallardo has won many national and international awards. Invitations followed for numerous tours and festivals, including the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, the Asiago Festival in Italy, the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival, the Schwetzingen Festival, the Kronberg Cello Festival, and the Rheingau...
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A native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, José Gallardo started piano lessons at the age of five, at first at the Conservatory in Buenos Aires. Later he continued his studies with Prof. Poldi Mildner in the Faculty of Music at the University of Mainz, completing his diploma in 1997. Even then he realised his first love would be for chamber music.
His musical inspiration came from such artists as Menahem Pressler, Alfonso Montecino, Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Sergiu Celibidache, Rosalyn Tureck and Bernard Greenhouse.
José Gallardo has won many national and international awards. Invitations followed for numerous tours and festivals, including the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, the Asiago Festival in Italy, the Ludwigsburg Palace Festival, the Schwetzingen Festival, the Kronberg Cello Festival, and the Rheingau Music Festival.
He is very busy playing recitals and concerts, including chamber music appearances with other musicians in Europe, Asia, Israel, Oceania and South America, among them Alberto Lysy, Gidon Kremer, Chen Zimbalista, Julius Berger, Danjulo Ishizaka, Nicolas Altstaedt and many more. Concert halls he has played in include the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, the Zurich Tonhalle, the Hamburg Musikhalle, the Kurhaus Wiesbaden, Teatro della Pergola Florence and the Wigmore Hall London. From 1998 to 2008, he taught in the faculty of music at the University of Mainz; since autumn 2008, he has been teaching at the Leopold Mozart Zentrum in the University of Augsburg.

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Composer(s)

Mieczysław Weinberg

Mieczysław Weinberg was a Russian composer of Polish-Jewish origin. He studied piano at the Conservatory of Warsaw and was soon praised for his musical talent. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Weinberg fled to Russia, first to Minsk and later to Tashkent, where he worked at the opera. There he also met Dmitri Shostakovich, who was impressed by his talent and would become an important influence on his music. Furthermore, he arranged an official invitation to Moscow for Weinberg, where he continued to stay for the rest of his life. Life under Stalin was not easy for a Jewish composer like Weinberg.  His works were not banned by the Soviet authorities, but they were not always well received. Moreover, he...
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Mieczysław Weinberg was a Russian composer of Polish-Jewish origin. He studied piano at the Conservatory of Warsaw and was soon praised for his musical talent. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Weinberg fled to Russia, first to Minsk and later to Tashkent, where he worked at the opera. There he also met Dmitri Shostakovich, who was impressed by his talent and would become an important influence on his music. Furthermore, he arranged an official invitation to Moscow for Weinberg, where he continued to stay for the rest of his life.
Life under Stalin was not easy for a Jewish composer like Weinberg. His works were not banned by the Soviet authorities, but they were not always well received. Moreover, he had to live in fear of being arrested, which happened to him in 1953. Shostakovich came to his rescue by proving his innocence in a letter to Lavrenti Beria, chief of the secret police. However, it was mainly due to Stalins death that Weinberg was saved.
After Stalins death, Weinberg continued to work on his extensive oeuvre, which consists of amongst others 26 symphonies, seventeen string quartets and more than 40 film scores. The majority of these works were performed by leading Russian musicians and orchestras. Thanks to the increasing amount of recordings, his works become more and more well-known outside of Russia.

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Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian pianist and composer of the Soviet period. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (from 1962 until his death). A polystylist, Shostakovich developed a hybrid voice, combining a variety of different musical techniques into his works. His music is characterized by sharp contrasts, elements of the grotesque, and ambivalent tonality; the composer was also heavily influenced by the...
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Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian pianist and composer of the Soviet period. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century.
Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR (1947–1962) and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (from 1962 until his death).
A polystylist, Shostakovich developed a hybrid voice, combining a variety of different musical techniques into his works. His music is characterized by sharp contrasts, elements of the grotesque, and ambivalent tonality; the composer was also heavily influenced by the neo-classical style pioneered by Igor Stravinsky, and (especially in his symphonies) by the late Romanticism associated with Gustav Mahler.
Shostakovich's orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti. His chamber output includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and two pieces for string octet. His solo piano works include two sonatas, an early set of preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Other works include three operas, several song cycles, ballets, and a substantial quantity of film music; especially well known is The Second Waltz, Op. 99, music to the film The First Echelon (1955–1956), as well as the suites of music composed for The Gadfly.

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Press

''Lovers from the more tonal work of the last century will definitely find their passion. This album is a, a dark, a  sharp and original production: great.''
Klassiek Centraal, 03-12-2016

Asian Review
Aziatisch, 01-6-2016

["].. A wonderful program, sublime and equipped with the best explanation I've read in a long time."
Opusklassiek, 01-1-2016

Forbes Top 10 Best Classical Recordings 2015 " [...] the soloist finds just the right balance between dark and light, sorrow and twisted joy."
Forbes, 09-12-2015

''Roth and ruben Gazarin make more of the flickers of hope than any previous performance I've heard, but the ending still feels poised on an existential knife-edge''
BBC Music Magazine, 02-11-2015

Music: 4 Stars Sound: 4 Stars
Fono Forum, 01-10-2015

"Roth is superb – his tone suitably dessicated during Hartmann's stark introduction, though there's no lack of expressive warmth when the Adagio unfolds."
theartsdesk.com, 01-10-2015

['']...The accompaniments are excellent, ant it all makes for an eminently collectable disc...['']
GRAMOPHONE, 01-9-2015

Luister 10 ! ["].. A wonderful program, sublimely performed and provided with the best explanation I've read in a long time."
Luister, 01-9-2015

About Weinberg Society
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26-8-2015

Intense yet relatively unknown works which deserve to be heard The music on this disc deserves far wider currency and in Linus Roth's performances the works have a powerful advocate. Possessed of a fine-grained singing tone with a real inner strength, Roth also has the requisite technique in addition. His is superbly supported by Ruben Gazarian and the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn. Star rating: 5.0  
Planet Hugill, 19-8-2015

A fine and easy to listen to interpretation, where Roth and WKO meet featherly on eye level.
Heilbronner Stimme, 18-8-2015

" Musical history is full of magnificent torsos; works by major composers from Mozart (Requiem), via Bruckner (Ninth Symphony) to Bartók (Viola Concerto) that have been left incomplete. Nevertheless, it is a substantial coup to be able to present it here, performed by the brilliant young German violinist Linus Roth, with José Gallardo at the piano. It is quite a shock when the piece suddenly evaporates in the middle of a piano phrase. That said, it is emphatically worth hearing, both for its great inherent beauty, and because some of the themes and motifs that were later to be used in the Tenth Symphony.So this disc is an important and absorbing issue; terrific music played with total conviction by an outstanding soloist and fine supporting orchestra but that ‘headline’ quality is supplied by the tantalising Shostakovich fragment." 
Music Web International, 03-8-2015

"vividly-performed collection"
The Irish Times, 01-8-2015

5 stars "A fascinating and rewarding SACD, this, superbly played and finely engineered."
Classical Ear, 29-7-2015

""With a world premier debut on record of the newly found opening of a violin sonata that Dmitri Shostakovich started in 1945, Linus Roth has crowned his work. After a mild start of this piece, some disturbing sounds enter."
De Volkskrant, 29-7-2015

"The mixture out of an melodical basic force, bittersweet resignation and a bizarre shapes-play in concertino, the excitement of the from Roth brilliantly projected rhapsodie are a happening." 5 stars
Augsburger Allgemeine, 24-7-2015

"Linus Roth, José Gallardo and the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn perform this intelligently conceived program with passionate energy, always getting to the core of the music." 5 stars
Pizzicato, 23-7-2015

"The consolating harmonies of the last movement (Hartmann) are just magical. A kinf of recording you go back to!"
vagnethierry.fr, 23-7-2015

"...gifted young violinist Linus Roth..."
Independent, 18-7-2015

Sound 10 - Booklet 8 - Repertoire 9 - Interpretation 10
Crescendo BE, 16-7-2015

"With unforced virtuosity these are firm and purposeful interpretations that penetrate deep to the emotional core of the works. Marvellously performed and recorded, if this fascinating twentieth-century repertoire appeals this is a ‘must buy’."
Music Web International, 13-7-2015

"This is a strikingly rewarding programme from the young German violinist, Linus Roth Hartmann’s chillingly apprehensive “Concerto funebre”, containing certain echoes of Shostakovich in its acerbic as well as its introspective moments, is given a powerfully expressive performance by Roth and the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra." 4/5 stars
The Telegraph, 11-7-2015

"...a disc like violinist Linus Roth’s Wartime Consolations is a much-needed oasis of pure oxygen—and, indeed, an oasis and not a mirage that ultimately disappoints—amidst a smog-smirched desert clouded by a continuing sandstorm of aimless recordings of over-exposed standard repertory. The spellbinding pyrotechnics display of Roth’s playing is an outstanding finale to a work that should be performed far more often."
Voix des Arts, 08-7-2015

"The fascinating find here is an unfinished Sonata for Violin and Piano by Shostakovich, never before recorded: five and a half minutes in which a wistful waltz transforms itself into a brittle pre-echo of the Tenth Symphony. Linus Roth brings to it an intense, deep sonority.”
The Observer, 06-7-2015

"It’s more than a curiosity...(...) it sounds like a piece you know, that you’ve heard before – fascinating.  Congratulations to Linus Roth for digging that one up."
BBC Radio 3, 05-7-2015

"We are eavesdropping on a master symphonist at work, and that is a consolation in its own way." 4/5 stars
The Independent on Sunday, 05-7-2015

"For his new album Linus Roth  elected four not so easy works that project the Second World War on the eardrum. His specialty, because earlier Roth proved to be an excellent interpreter of music from this dark period. Yet Wartime consolations is nothing less than a feast for the ears."
De Standaard, 01-7-2015

 "Linus Roth brings to it (Sonata for Violin and Piano by Shostakovich) an intense, deep sonority. Also new is Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes in its orchestral version – a gloomy meditation that suddenly acquires vivid virtuosic strength"
The Guardian Online, 28-6-2015

"Only with immaculate technique and resolute tone can this slim musical light diet become a delicacy: Linus Roth celebrates the piece in a dense dialoque with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra."
Spiegel Online, 14-6-2015

 Clip about 'Linus Roth - Wartime Consolations' on klassik.tv - Spiegel Online
Klassik.tv, 14-6-2015

4****stars "Roth has a beautiful, full tone and gives us glowing performances"  
Het Parool, 04-6-2015

"Not an easy, but dainty work. Recommendation!" 
Falter, 15-5-2015

Musik & Theater - 15-05-2015
Musik & Theater , 15-5-2015

Play album Play album

Often bought together with..

Georg Philipp Telemann
12 Fantasias for solo violin
Luigi De Filippi
The Complete String Quartets
Brodsky Quartet
Various composers
The Cello Suites
Mayke Rademakers
Anton Bruckner
Symphony no. 1 in C Minor
Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra
James MacMillan
Work for chamber orchestra with soloists
James MacMillan / Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic

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