Schoeck & Mendelssohn

Switzerland may not have a Richard Strauss, a Béla Bartók or a Paul Hindemith. But it does have an Othmar Schoeck! And four musicians from the Musikkollegium Winterthur are now showcasing him in his true light. For music of such quality is rarely found in this country, and the immense promise Schoeck showed in his younger years can be experienced in his First String Quartet. Werner Reinhart must have felt the same way, for he began his lifelong patronage of Schoeck shortly after the quartet’s premiere. Schoeck was also acquainted with Werner’s brother, the writer Hans, and so now his music is being performed in the home of another Reinhart brother, the art collector Oskar. Schoeck’s First String Quartet is a masterstroke; the more closely one listens, the more peculiar it becomes, and yet the more compelling. The middle movement in particular, with its dramatic shifts in mood, strikes one as very modern in its collage-like style, whilst at the same time one cannot help but hear Schoeck’s turbulent (love) life reflected within it. The first movement, by contrast, comes across as a neoclassical reworking of Felix Mendelssohn’s quartets – which is easier said than done! Schoeck succeeds in this; it is no coincidence that he was a master student of Max Reger in Leipzig. Finally, in the third and last movement, which takes up almost half the work, the Mendelssohn tone returns, but the Romantic introspection is occasionally hollowed out, turned inside out … In this respect, Hindemith, Bartók and Strauss are not so far removed, and yet it is all very much Schoeck.
Genuine Mendelssohn follows in eight songs and a fragment, composed to texts by Heinrich Heine and arranged for string quartet by Aribert Reimann (1936–2024). As one of the most important opera composers of the recent era, Reimann knew how to give instrumental expression to the underlying and hidden meanings of Mendelssohn and Heine. The soprano Mélanie Adami, who is well known in Winterthur, also has extensive opera experience and will be singing the congenial Mendelssohn/Reimann cycle.