Rosamunde Quartet/Christian Gerhaher

Othmar Schoeck: Notturno

ECM New Series

Rating: 5/5

Through the medium of this remarkable and poignant five-movement work for voice and string quartet, the genesis of which dates from 1931-33, this exemplary disc affords us what is arguably the magnum opus of Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957). Ten poems by German Romantic poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802-50) inspire Schoeck's late-Romantic style to great heights and depths of feeling, deeply personal ones as the excellent sleeve notes elucidate, encompassed within an overall tenor of meditative darkness that allows those moments of musically lighter beauty a greater hair-raising
intensity.