Hans Winterberg: Piano Concerto No. 2 & Symphony No. 2 – Jonathan Powell

Hans Winterberg grew up in Prague where he was one of a whole cadre of composers in the new Czech musical tradition. He claimed to have been inspired by Schoenberg, but in reality he cultivated a Central European Impressionism which he skilfully blended with complex rhythms. The two works presented on this album mark high points in Winterberg’s output. The circumstances in which they were composed could not have been more different. While the Second Symphony was written during the darkest moments of his life, he composed the Second Piano Concerto less than ten years later, in what was probably the brightest period of his career. That was in the early 1950s, when his breakthrough as a composer had faltered in Czechoslovakia, but now seemed certain in the young Federal Republic of Germany.