Quintett

Until recently, the wind quintet from 1957 published here for the first time seemed to be the only work in this formation in Hans Winterberg's (1901-1991) extensive catalog of chamber music gems. In the meantime, another piece in the traditional scoring for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon has been rediscovered in his estate, a suite from 1946, written in Prague one year after the composer's liberation from the Theresienstadt concentration camp and one year before his emigration to Munich. Winterberg, a pianist by training, – studied, like Hans Krása, with the respected Prague piano teacher Therese Wallerstein – composed just as passionately for string instruments as for woodwind and brass and experimented with the most diverse and sometimes most surprising formations. What is surprising about the Quintet from 1957 is the vehemence with which the composer lived out his Czech-Austrian-German multiple identities in his compositions, as if the work was a commentary on his complex and dramatic life story: When in all three movements the German children's song “Es klappert die Mühle am rauschenden Bach” is heard in a decidedly Bohemian-Moravian, post-Janácek environment, then this can certainly also be interpreted as an ironic nod of the composer, who in the precarious post-war years had to consider whether he was spending his money on bread and butter or on music paper.