Hans Winterberg

Rhapsodie

Hans Winterberg, born in Prague in 1901, belonged to the group of young Czech composers following in the footsteps of Leoš Janá?ek, (who died in 1928), who had received their cultural formative years in the final years of the Danube Monarchy. On the one hand, they took part in a process of national self-discovery, which was politically sealed with the attainment of state sovereignty by Czechoslovakia at the end of the First World War in 1918, but on the other hand they moved intellectually in a melting pot of influences ranging from Mahler and the Second Viennese School, which was strongly influential in Prague, to French Impressionism and Neoclassicism and German New Objectivity. Hans Winterberg, who had studied with Alexander Zemlinsky and Alois Hába, was one of the few composers of Jewish descent of this generation who survived the Holocaust and was able to further develop this specific Czech modernism in the post-war period. Shortly before the Communists seized power in 1948, he emigrated to Munich, where he enjoyed an impressive career in the years after 1950, with performances by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, renowned ensembles and soloists, for which he composed an impressive series of chamber music works. A treasure that is now being published for the first time in a cooperation between the Exilarte Center of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and Boosey & Hawkes. The Rhapsody was composed in 1951 at the height of Winterberg's new start in Munich. In terms of form and substance, it is located between a sonatina and a sonata and has some typical Winterberg characteristics: melodies and rhythms borrowed from Czech folklore and an impulsiveness and exploration not unlike Hindemith chamber music.