Bernd Alois Zimmermann

Initiale brings together, for the first time on record, all the songs of Bernd Alois Zimmermann, alongside his early chamber music. Except for the violin Sonate of 1950, every work here was written between 1939 and 1946. The disc fills a gap in Zimmermann's discography and shows the beginning of his career.

The eleven songs are sung by the soprano Anna Prohaska with the pianist Cordelia Höfer. Members of the Berlin Philharmonic play the chamber works: the violinists Alessandro Cappone and Rachel Schmidt, and the Trio Berlin (Aleksandar Ivić, Julia Gartemann, Martin Menking). The recordings were made between December 2009 and June 2010 at the Deutschlandradio Kultur studio in the Gärtnerstraße, Berlin, as a coproduction with Deutschlandradio Kultur, produced by Rainer Pöllmann. Heribert Henrich wrote the notes.

Zimmermann was born on 20 March 1918 in Bliesheim near Cologne and died on 10 August 1970 in Königsdorf. He served in the Wehrmacht from 1940 to 1942, returned to his studies at the Cologne Musikhochschule in 1942, and the first performances of his works took place in Cologne from 1944 to 1946. He never came closer to a neo-romantic tonal language than in these songs, a genre he did not return to. The texts come from Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans von Hopfen and Ernst Bertram, among others. The Drei Lieder aus dem Nachlass (1939-42) include Rilke's Lied der Abelone and Imaginärer Lebenslauf and Hans von Hopfen's Herbstlied. The Fünf Lieder (1942-46) contain Nietzsche's An der Brücke stand jüngst ich, Rilke's Stimme eines Armen an der Hand eines Engels and the song Initiale, which gives the album its name, and the Drei geistliche Lieder (1946) set Bertram's poems, ending with Abendglocke. The songs show both intimate feeling and Zimmermann's strong interest in literature.

The instrumental pieces fill in the picture. The Kleine Suite (Capriccioso, Intermezzo, Rondino) and the Aria for violin and piano date from 1942, and the string Trio from 1944, in three movements from an introduction through an Adagio to an Allegro molto finale. The Sonate for violin and piano, in three movements (Sonata, Fantasia, Rondo), is the latest work here.

CD, Wergo WER 6735 2, released in 2011 in the Edition Bernd Alois Zimmermann.