It’s an impressive disc, the selections presenting the composer at his finest, and all performed with precision and feeling, and recorded at the high standards associated with the BIS label, still laudably loyal to the SACD format. (Gavin Dixon, Classical CD Reviews)
Gavin Dixon of Classical CD Reviews on “Franz Schreker: Orchestral Music from the Operas”.
The record is published by BIS Records and has recently been nominated for the Swedish Grammy Awards for classical music.
A new production of Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang will première tomorrow at the Oper Graz. Make sure to visit their Facebook page for a variety of behind the scenes videos on the production.
In 2012, we conducted an interview with Ingo Metzmacher on Franz Schreker. You can watch the video here:
An English transcript of the interview is available on our MusikSalon.
Tatjana Gürbaca’s new production of Franz Schreker’s Der Ferne Klang will première tonight at the Nationaltheater Mannheim.
A little while ago, we interviewed conductor Ingo Metzmacher on the music of Franz Schreker. Watch the [German] interview here:
The Opera de Lyon will host a new production Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten [The Stigmatized] under the direction of David Bösch on 13 March. Further performances take place on 17, 20, 22, 26 and 28 March.
View their teaser online:
Michael Haas, author of Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis, has published a virtual exhibition on Franz Schreker on his website – a highly recommended guide to the most important ‘missing link’ in the history of 20th century music.
Conductor Ingo Metzmacher on Schreker:
Schreker was undoubtedly one of the last composers of this generation. A new aesthetic developed after the war. His personal fate as a “degenerate” artist in Berlin, who was driven out of office in 1933, attempted to emigrate and then died in 1934, is an additional factor. Like many others, he was simply forgotten – passed over. The Nazis did a good job on him.
Watch an interview with Ingo Metzmacher on the music of Franz Schreker.
Tomorrow, Friday 4 April, the Ensemble Resonanz will start their tour de France together with cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras. They will perform Franz Schreker’s Scherzo, Wolfgang Rihm’s Nachtordnung, Arnold Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht and also Matthias Georg Monn’s concert for violoncello and string orchestra.
They will give concerts on Friday at the Maison de la Culture in Grenoble, on Monday at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris and on Tuesday at the Arsenal in Metz.
Furthermore, Queyras and the ensemble are promoting their recent cd release on harmonia mundi; here is a German interview with Jean-Guihen Queyras on Berg, Schönberg and the recording:
The interview is also available in French.
Andrew Clements of the The Guardian reviews the new Challenge Classics recording of Franz Schreker’s Der Schatzgräber [The Treasure Hunter], recorded by Marc Albrecht, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and the Netherlands Opera Chorus at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam in autumn 2012.
Read the full review on The Guardian.
Yesterday Josep Pons conducted
the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. On
the programme: Franz
Schreker’s Vorspiel
zu einem Drama [Prelude to a
Drama].
The London Evening Standard writes that the concert “was held together not by anniversaries or any overriding concept but by the quality of the music itself.” Read the full review here.
At Sotheby’s “Music, Continental Books & Manuscripts” sale several items from the estate of Franz Schreker will be on sale. Among them: Schreker’s own annotated and marked-up scores of Der Ferne Klang and Der Schatzgräber, a full score of Schönberg’s Gurrelieder (also annotated by Schreker) and a first edition of Wozzeck, signed and inscribed by Berg to Schreker.
The auction starts tomorrow, 27 November, at 10:30 GMT. Find out more at Sotheby’s and at the Entartete Musik blog.
Speaking of Franz Schreker: here is an interview we did with Ingo Metzmacher in March 2011, in which the conductor talks about the music of (and the renewed interest in) Franz Schreker.
The interview is in German, but an English translation of the transcript is available here.
Here are some visual
impressions from the performance of the reduced version of Franz Schreker’s
Der
Schatzgräber [The Treasure Hunter] on 17 September at the Tabakfabrik in Linz.
Reviews of the long-lost opera were consistently positive, especially regarding the Israel Chamber Orchestra and Alexander Kaimbacher’s performance of the fool. In a previous post, we have already written about Der Standard’s plea to “play more Schreker in Vienna”.
View the score of the reduced version.
We recently visited the composer Werner Steinmetz who is intensively working on a reduced orchestration of Franz Schreker's opera Der Schatzgräber (The Treasure Hunter).
His orchestration will be the same as Schreker's Chamber Symphonie (23 musicians) that was composed more or less in the same period (1916).
The opera will be premiered on 12th September 2013 in Linz/Austria (a production of EntArteOpera).
100 years ago today, Franz Schreker’s Phantastische Ouverture was given its world première by the Tonkünstler Orchestra here at the Musikverein in Vienna.
Here’s an excerpt:
Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang opens at the Bonn Theatre this Sunday in a new production by Klaus Wiese. It’s his second Schreker production in Bonn, following on from Irrelohe in 2010.
Read our article on Schreker by Christopher Hailey: Discovering a Distant Sound, and watch our video interview with Ingo Metzmacher talking about Schreker's music.