Josef Tal: Works for Viola

Album review

While he emigrated to Palestine from his native Germany in 1934, Josef Tal – born Grünthal (1910-2008) – didn't follow in the footsteps of many Jewish composers in British Mandate Palestine, later Israel, who tried to incorporate popular near-Eastern folk tradition into their language. Tal, an avant-gardist in his day, a student of Hindemith, took on board atonalism, serialism, and early electronic music, all the while holding onto his melodic and tonal conceptions which he owed to Hindemith and Shostakovitch alike. His 1940 Suite for Solo Viola even recalls the accents of Max Reger... The Sonata for Viola and Piano of 1960 marked a clear transition towards a more modernist idiom, while the Duet for Viola and Violin of 1965 was an incursion into the European avant-garde of the day. This is an an avant-garde that clearly receded from view in Perspective, for solo viola, a work of his later maturity written in 1996, at the age of 86. Viola player Hartmut Rohde, a founding member of the Mozart Piano Quartet, and a favoured partner of stars like David Geringas, Janine Jansen and Jörg Widmann, offers up these rare pearls with a clear admiration for the composer, whom he was lucky enough to meet with, the better to understand his music. © SM/Qobuz