Suite

Hans Winterberg's extraordinary life was written in two chapters, one Czech and one German, split right down the middle by the experience of the Shoah, which Winterberg, unlike his colleagues Ullmann, Krása, Haas and Klein, miraculously survived. In 1947, the Prague-born composer moved to Munich, where he worked for the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation. As a student of Alexander Zemlinsky and Alois Hába, he belongs both to the Czech tradition following Janácek and to the circle of the Second Viennese School. He saw himself as a bridge builder between Western and Eastern culture. The circumstances under which Winterberg was able to compose during the war years are still unclear. Although his “mixed marriage” initially saved him from deportation, he had to perform forced labour and was eventually sent to the Terezin ghetto in January 1945.

The Suite for Violin and Piano was composed in 1942, the year in which both Winterberg's mother and his piano professor Thérèse Wallerstein were murdered by the Nazis. Compared to the violin sonata from 1936, the Suite is much more condensed, lasting less than seven minutes. A melody dominated by chromatic turns and expressionist harmony lend the work its melancholy character, which gives way, however, to an almost irrepressible defiance in the rhythmically percussive last movement.