Hans Winterberg: Piano Concerto No. 2; Symphony No. 2

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 skillfully blended with complex rhythms. The two works presented on this CD mark high points in Winterberg's oeuvre. 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 existence, he composed the Second Piano Concerto less than ten years later, in what was probably the brightest moment of his life, the early 1950s, when his breakthrough as a composer, which he had been unable to achieve in Czechoslovakia, now seemed certain in the young Federal Republic of Germany.