Bernard Neuhoff speaks with Wilfried Hiller and Ulf Schirmer with sound recordings of Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Elisabeth Hartmann
Karl Amadeus Hartmann created several versions of his only full-length opera, Simplicius Simplicissimus, making it difficult for scholars and performers to establish a definitive version of the score. This recording, taken from a 2005 performance at Munich's Prinzregentheater, is based on a reconstruction of Hartmann's original 1936 version made by Wilfried Hiller and Robert Klimesch. Some of their choices seem odd; they include the 10-minute Prokofievian overture Hartmann added in 1939, which has little to do with the ...
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Karl Amadeus Hartmann created several versions of his only full-length opera, Simplicius Simplicissimus, making it difficult for scholars and performers to establish a definitive version of the score. This recording, taken from a 2005 performance at Munich's Prinzregentheater, is based on a reconstruction of Hartmann's original 1936 version made by Wilfried Hiller and Robert Klimesch. Some of their choices seem odd; they include the 10-minute Prokofievian overture Hartmann added in 1939, which has little to do with the piece as a whole, but they omit the musically ravishing and dramatically critical Interlude the composer added at the same time. They also use the Hartmann's original spartan orchestration and restore some spoken dialogue. The work sidesteps many of the conventions of opera, and resembles Stravinsky's L'histoire du Soldat musically and formally, but it also includes operatic singing. It would be easy to enumerate the influences audible in the score -- which include most obviously...
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