Winterberg/ Helbig - Piano Music 2

The tale of Hans Winterberg (1901-91) is a strange one. A survivor of the Terezín concentration camp, where he had been interned as a Czech Jew, he settled in Munich after the War as a German citizen, and his music enjoyed a number of broadcasts - but with his death his estate disappeared into a legal limbo, emerging only in 2015. This second album of his piano music reveals an unusual and individual voice, an idiosyncratic blend of Janácek, Ravel, Schoenberg and other mid-twentieth-century masters, animated by a hard-edged, freewheeling energy and grim humor reminiscent of his close contemporary, Nikos Skalkottas.