Following the first recordings of Viktor Ullmann's and Norbert von Hannenheim's sonatas (EDA 5, EDA 38), we are delighted that the Funk Foundation Hamburg has made it possible for us to present the complete sonata cycle of Hans Winterberg for the first time, a composer who, as a pupil of Zemlinsky and grand-pupil of Schreker, also belongs to the Second Viennese School in the broader sense. In Jonathan Powell we have been able to recruit a proven expert for the recording of Winterberg's piano works, which we are embarking on in parallel with the complete recording of his chamber music.

Almost sixty years lie between Hans Winterberg's first and last compositions – both piano works – the Toccata from 1926 by the 25-year-old and the Three Piano Pieces from 1984/85 by the 80-year-old. Given this long period of time, it may come as a surprise that his five piano sonatas – the supreme genre of piano music, especially in the 19th century – were composed in the short period of just fourteen years, between 1936 and 1950, and the middle three in the extremely difficult years for Winterberg of 1941, 1947 and 1948. The fact that he considered his contribution to the genre complete with the fifth can be explained by the fact that he subsequently turned increasingly to other cyclical forms that carried less 'historical weight', above all the piano suite. Winterberg was evidently an excellent pianist and it can be assumed that he wrote his piano works with his own pianistic abilities in mind. He studied piano from the age of nine with the renowned Prague pianist Therese (Terezie) Wallerstein, the sister of the later famous theatre director Lothar Wallerstein, with whom Hans Krása also trained as a young pianist. When Winterberg was accepted into the conducting class of its director Alexander von Zemlinsky and the composition class of Fidelio F. Finke at the German Academy of Music and Performing Arts in 1920, his pianistic education was apparently considered complete. After finishing his studies, he worked for several years as a répétiteur at the theatres in Brno and Jablonec nad Nisou before settling in Prague as a freelance composer and theory teacher. Research into Winterberg's pre-war biography has so far uncovered little information about his work as a pianist. The fact that he performed in public is at least evident from an announcement of a concert at the Prague Urania in December 1935, where he took part as a pianist in the premiere of his own songs based on texts by Franz Werfel.

As a composer, Winterberg was a late bloomer compared to the only slightly older Viktor Ullmann and Hans Krása. While Krása and Ullmann had already made international careers beyond Vienna and Prague with important performances in their early 20s, Winterberg did not enter the public eye as a composer until his mid-30s – and only to a very limited extent and confined to Prague. However, this says nothing about the quality of his compositions, but is one of the many reasons why he was only rediscovered, or rather discovered at all, after such a long delay: he was not a major figure in the music world before the epochal caesura of 1939–1945. The events of the Second World War and the subsequent political reorganization of Eastern Europe meant that Winterberg had to start more or less from scratch after the war – at the halfway point of his life.

Hans, or Hanuš as he spelled himself in Czech, was born in Prague on 23 March 1901, grew up as a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with an Austrian passport. He became a Czechoslovak citizen in October 1918, then a stateless person after the annexation of the so-called 'rest of Czechoslovakia' by Nazi Germany in March 1939 due to his Jewish ancestry. He then became Czechoslovak again after his liberation from the Theresienstadt concentration camp in May 1945, subsequently having the status of a stateless person after moving to Munich in 1947 and then a 'Volksdeutscher', and finally a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany after his second marriage in 1950. It should be obvious that it makes no sense to seek a clear national 'identity' in his music.

Although Winterberg had studied with the most important teachers in Prague in the 1920s and 30s, he described himself as an autodidact and as a "mediator between cultures and times" in a questionnaire distributed by Heinrich Simbriger in 1955 to composers who came from the former German eastern territories: "As I lived in Prague, the city of my birth, until the age of 46, with only minor exceptions, it would of course be very surprising if the Slavic element had not rubbed off on my artistic production. In addition to traces of Eastern folklore, this is particularly evident in rhythmic moments. But these elements are definitely interspersed with a harmony that is imposdefinitely of Western origin, I mean this in the broadest sense of the word, of course. (...) If my compositions are perhaps more widely recognized in the future, they will form a kind of bridge between Western culture (including German culture) and that of the East. (…) In general, I am probably the typical musician of transition (der typische Übergangsmusiker)."

Winterberg kept detailed records of the performances and radio broadcasts of his pieces after his move to Munich in 1947, but there is no entry for any of his piano sonatas. It can thus be assumed that they were not played in public during his lifetime and that both Brigitte Helbig and Jonathan Powell gave first performances coram publico of the first two and the last three respectively. As Jonathan Powell notes in his following introduction to Winterberg's sonatas, the cycle of the five works can be understood as an organic whole. We do not hear direct echoes of the tragic events in Czech-Austrian-German history, as we find them in Janáček's piano sonata '1. X. 1905' or in Karel Berman's suite 'Reminiscences'. At the same time, however, they sublimate the immense tensions of an epoch that erupted with the catastrophe of the Second World War and the Shoah and are evidence of a fascinating talent for synthesis.

Detailed information on Winterberg's biography can be found on the website of his publisher www.boosey.com/Winterberg, in the Winterberg blog on the website of his grandson www. kreitmeir.de, in the blog of the musicologist Michael Haas www.forbiddenmusic.org, on the website of the Exilarte Center at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna www.exilarte.org, and in the essays on the other Winterberg productions on this website (EDA 51, EDA 53).

Frank Harders-Wuthenow, March 2025

English Translation: Jonathan Powell

This recording of the rediscovered piano sonatas of Hans (or Hanuš) Winterberg provides a snapshot of not only the vibrant musical culture of interwar Czechoslovakia – a period during which composers assimilated a large and bewildering quantity of new music from across Europe – but also of one composer's extraordinary stylistic journey that took place of the space of just 12 years. A brief preamble will, perhaps, throw some light on the development of the sonata genre in Czech music up until this point. Subsequent to the appearance of the monumental cycle of 34 sonatas of Jan Ladislav (or Václav) Dusík (or Dussek), the last of these widely influential (for Beethoven, for example) and original works being written in the year of his death (1812), the sonata experienced something of a hiatus as Czech composers appear to have paid scant interest in the genre for the rest of the 19th century. Smetana's only essay was a youthful – if effective – work written aged 22 in 1846, while Dvořák abstained from contributing to the genre altogether. Fibich's love of the piano miniature certainly didn't extend to composing substantial works for the instrument. Subsequent generations were more forthcoming, with Vitězslav Novák penning his muscular Sonata eroica in 1900, while it could be claimed that his cycle Pan (1910) is a thinly disguised symphony for piano solo (indeed, the composer orchestrated the work to great effect a couple of years later). Josef Suk, though a relatively prolific, highly original composer of piano music, left no sonata. Other examples in the late-Romantic mould include the two sonatas by Otokar Jeremiáš (1892—1962) and the four by Václav Kaprál (1889—1947). Although both these composers were considerably younger than Janáček, their language is very much rooted in the 19th century and thus worlds away from the stark mood of the latter's Sonata '1.X.1905'. One of the most singular sonatas by a Czech composer in a late-Romantic idiom, and one particularly germane to our consideration of Winterberg, is that by the latter's teacher-tobe, Alois Hába. It inhabits a distinctly Viennese ambience, recalling early Schönberg, Zemlinsky and, occasionally, Schreker. Hába, as is well known, soon relinquished this style, becoming fascinated by Schönberg's athematic approach in Erwartung and, more famously, by microtonal music. Another transitional work is the virtuosic Sonata op. 7 (1917) by Boleslav Vomáčka; cast in one continuous movement, it incorporates textures that seem indebted to French piano writing, and is suitably is dedicated to Blanche Selva who gave the world première of the work in Prague. Jaromir Weinberger's sonatas, all three juvenilia written before 1918, are also of interest in our context because they – especially the 3rd – confirm how strongly Debussy was received by this young generation of Bohemian composers. Furthermore, it would be impossible to round up this admittedly incomplete survey without mentioning the contributions of Emil Axman (1887–1949), and Vitězslava Kaprálová, whose Sonata romantica, though not in the mature style of her masterly Dubnová preludia [April Preludes], garnered significant and widespread praise after its first performance in Brno in 1934, a year after the work's completion.

During the second and third decades of the 20th century, a key figure in the introduction of new music to Prague audiences was the composer and conductor Alexander von Zemlinsky. From 1911 to 1927 he was conductor at the Neues Deutsches Theater in Prague, and he organized orchestral concerts featuring new music – perhaps most notably conducting the world première of Schönberg's Erwartung in 1924 in Prague, some 15 years after the work's completion. Zemlinsky also staged performances of operas by Hindemith, Schreker, Dukas, in addition to the Gurre-Lieder, Wozzeck and his own Lyrische Symphonie in the theatre. In 1922 Zemlinsky also established a Prague branch of the Society for Private Musical Performance (originally founded by Schönberg in Vienna in 1918); the organization had quite a membership of about 400 and flourished for a few years before its activities were shut down. As it turned out, the influences of Viennese (initially) and French music (slightly later) became intermingled with a homegrown language (and Janáček in particular) to form a particularly fertile ground for Czech composers during the pre-World War II period and beyond. Indeed, Martinů acknowledged that he heard Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande for the first time at the German theatre and that it had a huge impact on him. He had toured as violinist of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra around Europe in 1919 and thus garnered many impressions of contemporary composers' works, bringing their ideas – transformed into his early style – back to his homeland. He lived in Paris from 1923 and became friendly with composers such as Roussel and stylistically close to "Les Six". Later, his music was not performed in communist Czechoslovakia due to his refusal to accept the directorship of the Prague Conservatoire after World War II. However, Martinů's impact on pre-and post-WW2 Czech music cannot be underestimated; regardless of his relocation to France he kept in close touch with Czech colleagues. His impressive piano sonata dates from 1957, almost a decade after Winterberg had composed his last essay in the genre. Zemlinsky, however, was far from the only driving force behind new music in Prague during those years. The ISCM [International Society for Contemporary Music] held its annual festival in Prague (jointly with Paris) in both 1924 and the following year, and it can be imagined that Winterberg would have attended at least some of the concerts it presented. Many of the concerts featured new European works never heard before in Czechoslovakia and, as such, must have been momentous occasions which significantly broadened the horizons of the musical public and, in particular, young Czech composers.

So it can hardly be surprising that after such an influx of diverse influences, the sonatas written by Czech composers after the end of World War I were of a quite different character than their predecessors. Karel Jirák's Sonata (1926) was published by the Viennese Publisher Universal Edition (UE), the leading publisher for contemporary music in the German-speaking world, surely a sign of the prestige and recognition Czech new music was gaining during this period. There are several points of interest in the work which can be linked to Winterberg's compositional practice: the first movement contains folk-like melodies in the right hand which are underpinned by tonally ambiguous ostinati, often building to climaxes of an orchestral nature. The second movement – like those in most of Winterberg's sonatas – opens with a wide-ranging melodic line punctuated by distant open fifth and dominant chords in lower register. Prefiguring many of Winterberg's sonata finales, the last movement is an energetic burlesque in 2/2, frequently interrupted by 3/4 and 5/4 bars.

Other notable sonatas written by Czech composers which are roughly contemporary with, or just predate Winterberg's cycle include those by Ervín Schulhoff (1918); this piece is full of ostinati, post-tonal chromaticism, syncopations, with the first movement ending on a long pedal note in the manner of Winterberg's First Sonata. Moreover, the first movement features the superimposition of repeated motifs of different length, a device which Winterberg was to push to its limits. Karel Reiner's sonata of 1931 is dedicated to his (and Winterberg's future teacher) Hába, and shows the unmistakable influence of Schönberg. Other notable examples include works by Vladimír Polívka (1932), Jaroslav Ježek (1941), and Jaroslav Doubrava (1948/9). It should also be noted that Czech composers were not only writing sonatas for the piano, but a myriad of shorter pieces and cycles thereof. The rhythmic invention in Pastorale, a movement of the exceptional Suite (1935) by Pavel Haas (a Janáček student), displays a distinct parallel with Winterberg's own style -- a figure of three semiquavers is pitted against one of four with accents placed on unexpected beats. Gideon Klein (1919–1945) was a much younger fellow student of Winterberg's at the end of the 1930s in Alois Hába's class at the Prague Conservatory. He wrote his Piano Sonata in 1943 in Terezin. Klein organised concerts in the camp but was deported to Auschwitz before Winterberg arrived there. There are several points in common between their sonatas, especially with regard to saturated chromatic harmony, rhythmic energy, use of ostinati (especially in slow movements), and a lack of timidity in employing late-Romantic type piano writing within the context of a more modernist language.

Viktor Ullmann is the only other Czech composer whose series of piano sonatas is comparable in scope, originality and mastery of technique to that of Winterberg. His first sonata dates – like Winterberg's first – from 1936 and, perhaps predictably, combines a Viennese intensity of expression (the second movement is subtitled 'in memoriam Gustav Mahler') with the rhythmic willfulness and songlike thematism typical of Czech music, replete with smatterings of Scriabinesque harmony and pellucid, almost impressionist textures. Like the majority of Ullmann's seven sonatas, as well as the works in the genre by his contemporaries mentioned above, it is cast in three movements; Winterberg was to use the three-movement design in his first three sonatas, expanding to a four-movement format in the remaining two. In comparison to his four piano concertos – composed between 1948 and 1974 – and the seven piano suites – written between 1927 and the 1960s (the Impressionist Piano Suite dedicated to his fourth wife Luise Maria cannot be dated precisely) – they were composed in the relatively short period of 14 years.

Throughout the course of the five sonatas, we can observe the following binary trends, with Winterberg's approach evolving from a perhaps typical modernist stance of the 1920s and 30s (darkness, complexity, fragmentation, contrast, intensity of expression, atonality), towards a new language of the post-World War II era (embodied by descriptors such as but not limited to clarity, simplicity, stability, continuity, equilibrium, and tonal/post-tonal harmonic language), a language which though transformed, still retains traces of its stormy roots in the previous decade.

These transformations can be grouped into five principal categories:

i. darkness/obscurity – light/clarity

ii. complexity – simplicity

iii. sharp contrast/fragmentation/fast rate of change – continuity/stability

iv. intense expression/emotion – calmness/ equilibrium

v. atonal — post-tonal

The fact that all of these processes are related and take place over the course of the five sonatas, makes a good case for listening to all sonatas all in one sitting, as one might with the last five sonatas of Beethoven or Scriabin. Furthermore, a thumbnail sketch of the salient characteristics of each sonata (and mainly their first movements), brings the process into relief:

Sonata No. 1 rapid mood swings, ecstatic-frenzied

Sonata No. 2 muscular, dynamic contrasts

Sonata No. 3 obsessive moto perpetuo, dark pulsation

Sonata No. 4 lyrical, expansive, Romantic virtuosity

Sonata No. 5 pastoral, peaceful mood established over long sections, ecstatic-contemplative

Over the course of a little more than a decade, Winterberg honed a subtly syncretic approach to the diverse influences which he had been exposed to during the explosion of new music in Prague in the 1920s and 30s. Initially in awe of the Second Viennese School (and his first Piano suite of 1927, strikingly bears witness to this), then assimilating aspects of French impressionism, he finally – presumably during his time as a répétiteur at the Brno theatre – fell under the spell of Janáček’s late works. Naturally, each listener encountering these fascinating works for the first time may sense the presence of other influences – those of Hindemith, perhaps Busoni (especially in the first movement of the Fifth Sonata), even Scriabin – but one can only but marvel at their inventiveness and the sheer serendipity of their rediscovery.

Jonathan Powell, March 2025