Othmar Schoeck - Cello Works (Christian Poltéra)

Information

Composer: Othmar Schoeck

• Concerto for Cello and String Orchestra, Op. 61
• Sonata for Cello and Piano
• Six Song transcriptions (for cello and piano)

Christian Poltéra, cello

Malmö Symphony Orchestra

Tuomas Ollila-Hannikainen, conductor

Julius Drake, piano

Date: 2007

Label: BIS

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Review

Othmar Schoeck wrote very few pieces for orchestra, and even fewer for full orchestra. This seems to be a pattern with 20th-century Swiss composers, perhaps due to the ready availability of chamber orchestras and smaller groupings, in addition to the standard-sized ensembles in Zurich and Geneva. Or maybe it’s a leftover Calvinist inhibition. Whatever the ultimate reason, Schoeck is best known as a song composer, and his Cello Concerto is scored for solo plus strings. Happily, the limited forces result in music that lacks neither color nor variety.

The work’s four movements play for a bit more than half an hour and are well contrasted, while the composer’s expertise in writing vocal music assures a quantity of lyrical and attractive melodic ideas. Christian Poltéra plays it very well, with aptly singing tone and plenty of rhythmic heft. There are a couple of places in the long first two movements (taking up two-thirds of the whole) where Schoeck, and not the players, lets the tension sag a bit, but the problem isn’t too serious. Conductor Tuomas Ollila and the orchestra sound perfectly comfortable in music that hardly could have been familiar to them.

Schoek died in 1957 before he completed his Cello Sonata, leaving it a three-movement torso that ends, rather touchingly actually, with a somewhat slender Andantino. Still, the piece clearly lacks a satisfying conclusion, and since these two works comprise the composer’s entire output for cello, Poltéra and his accompanist Julius Drake include six song transcriptions tastefully arranged for cello and piano. I’m not sure exactly how many people will want the complete Schoeck cello music–it is, to put it kindly, a niche–but it’s one that this very well recorded disc fills admirably.

— David Hurwitz

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Othmar Schoeck (1 September 1886 – 8 March 1957) was a Swiss Romantic composer and conductor known for his extensive output of art songs. He studied at the Zurich and Leipzig conservatories under Friedrich Hegar and Max Reger. Based in Zurich, he worked as a composer, accompanist, and for over 20 years, chief conductor of the City Orchestra of St. Gallen. His notable works include the opera Penthesilea and concertos for violin, cello and horn. Schoeck's music was championed by renowned conductors and singers of his time, and in recent years, his work has seen renewed international recognition.

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Christian Poltéra (born 1977 in Zürich) is a Swiss cellist. He studied with Nancy Chumachenco, Boris Pergamenschikow and Heinrich Schiff. As a soloist he works with eminent orchestras such as the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, under such conductors as Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Chailly and Andris Nelsons. He also devotes himself intensively to chamber music, being a founding member of the Trio Zimmermann. Poltéra teaches at the Lucerne University. He plays a Antonio Casini cello from 1675 and the famous "Mara" Stradivari from 1711.

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