Winterberg: All Piano Sonatas

This is the third album in a series of chamber music and piano works by the Czech-Jewish composer Hans Winterberg, mostly first recordings. All the compositions were newly edited from the manuscripts for this recording in cooperation between the Exilarte Research Centre of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and the international music publisher Boosey & Hawkes. Sonatas Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are world premiere recordings. Hans Winterberg, born in Prague in 1901, studied with Alexander Zemlinsky and Alois Hába. Until the annexation of the Czechoslovak Republic by Nazi Germany in 1939, he worked as a conductor, pianist and composer. As a member of a Jewish family that had lived in Prague for centuries, he survived—after forced labour and deportation to Theresienstadt—through a series of miracles. Winterberg, whose compositional legacy was only recently rediscovered, combines various influences in his music into an original and exciting personal style. He draws on stylistic elements from Leoš Janáček, but is also influenced by the Second Viennese School and French Impressionism. He saw himself as a bridge-builder between the cultures of Eastern and Western Europe. Jonathan Powell has become the world’s leading advocate for Hans Winterberg’s piano music after performing all five of the composer’s piano sonatas and many of his piano pieces in concert and on the radio. In 2020, he made the first recording ever of Winterberg’s First Piano Concerto; recordings of the Second and Third Piano Concertos will follow in 2025/26.