Hermann Scherchen
Scherchen was one of the leading conductors in the middle part of the 20th Century, especially valued for his pioneering performances of the contemporary music of his time.
He was essentially self-taught as a musician, and became a violist in the Blüthner Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic when he was sixteen. In 1911 he was an assistant to Arnold Schoenberg in the preparation of Pierrot Lunaire for performance. Following its Berlin premiere, the piece was taken on a tour in which Scherchen conducted. He became the conductor of the Riga Symphony Orchestra in 1914, but was soon interred by the Russians as an enemy alien when World War I started. He returned to Germany after Russia left the war to found the Neue Musikgesellschaft, and the Scherchen Quartet. In 1919 he founded a militant magazine Melos.
He succeeded Furtwängler as the director of the Frankfurt Museum Concerts in 1922 and in the same year began a long relationship wit the Winterthur Musikollegium in Switzerland. From 1928 to 1933 he was the Generalmusikdirektor in Königsberg. He frequently conducted contemporary music festivals, especially with the International Society for Contemporary Music, with which he was connected from its founding in 1923. Among his premieres in the 1920s and '30s were the s Three Fragments from Wozzeck by Berg and the quarter-tone opera Mother by Alois Haba.
He left Germany immediately upon the accession of the Nazis to power in 1933, settling in Switzerland, where he became Music Director of the Zurich Radio Orchestra, and also gave courses in conducting, which became a regular summer school in Switzerland in 1939. In the same year he founded the Ars Viva Orchestra. He married the Chinese composer Hsia Shu-sien. They had a daughter, Tona Scherchen (or Tona Scherchen-Hsiao), born in 1937, who went back to China with her mother in 1949. She became a noted composer, especially after she moved to France in 1972.
Scherchen resumed his continent-wide activities after World War II ended. He was director of the Zürich Radio orchestra (1944-1950), and in 1950, with the support of UNESCO, opened a studio for electro-acoustical research in 1954 in Gravesano, the village where he lived. He continues his writing about new music in the Gravesano Blätter. Unlike many conductors of his generation his "new music" was not merely the new music of his youth, but the continuing evolution of new music. In the 1950s he conducted the premieres of such works as Dallapiccola's Il Prigionero, Dessau's Das Verhör des Lukullus, and Henze's König Hirsch. He was the first to play any music from Schoenberg's Aron und Moses in Darmstadt (1951), edited it for its first performance under his colleague Hans Rosbaud, and led its first performance in Berlin. He did not appear in the United States until 1964 when he conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra.
He was the author of a leading text on conducting, and of many articles supporting modern music. He suffered a heart attack while conducting Malipiero's Orfeide in Florence and died four days later.
© Joseph Stevenson /TiVo
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Mozart, Vol. 1: Symphonies Nos. 29, 35 "Haffner" & 36 "Linz" (Remastered 2022)
Wiener Symphoniker, Hermann Scherchen
Clásica - Editado por Archiphon el 20 ene. 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Schoenberg: Piano and Violin Concertos
Eduard Steuermann, Rudolf Kolisch, Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt, Hermann Scherchen, Otto Matzerath
Clásica - Editado por Archiphon el 5 mar. 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Six Brandenburg Concertos
Hermann Scherchen, Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper
Clásica - Editado por >ReNovo< el 13 mar. 2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen conducts Grieg and Bizet (Hermann Scherchen)
Clásica - Editado por Tahra el 2 sep. 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn: Symphonies Nos. 88 & 92
Clásica - Editado por Stave el 17 feb. 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1-6, BWV 1046-1051 (Remastered 2024)
Orchestre Des Cento Soli, Hermann Scherchen
Música concertante - Editado por Archipel el 2 feb. 2024
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 40: Scherchen Conducts Beethoven (Historical Recording)
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Clásica - Editado por Archiphon el 18 ago. 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 12: Scherchen Conducts Tchaikovsky
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Clásica - Editado por Archiphon el 1 jul. 2014
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 7: Scherchen Conducts Vivaldi
Julian Olevsky, Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Clásica - Editado por Archiphon el 4 mar. 2014
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Symphony, No. 1
Clásica - Editado por Nar Classical el 10 jul. 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Herman Scherchen, conductor: Dvořák, Brahms (Live)
RTSI Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Clásica - Editado por Ermitage Records el 27 nov. 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Symphonies n°5 à 8 (Ludwig van Beethoven / Hermann Scherchen (II))
Música sinfónica - Editado por Tahra el 27 ago. 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen dirige Beethoven: Intégrale des Symphonies / , Vol. 2
Clásica - Editado por Mangora Classical el 22 may. 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen: An Imaginary Concert
Hermann Scherchen, Kölner Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester, Robert Casadesus
Clásica - Editado por Tahra el 12 may. 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen, conductor : Ludwig van Beethoven
Hermann Scherchen, Orchestra RTSI
Clásica - Editado por Ermitage Records el 27 abr. 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn: Symphony No.97 in C Major
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Clásica - Editado por Ancie Prodige el 13 oct. 2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen dirige Mozart : Les Petits Riens, Concerto pour flute et harpe, "Eine kleine Nachtmusik"
Clásica - Editado por Alexandre Bak - Tahra el 1 abr. 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Piano Concerto Nos. 4 & 5 (Remastered 2022)
Paul Badura-Skoda, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Clásica - Editado por Artemisia el 6 ene. 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Trumpet Concerti
Hermann Scherchen, Roger Delmotte, Arthur Haneuse, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Clásica - Editado por Mezzoforte el 15 jun. 2018
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn: Symphonies 99 & 100
Clásica - Editado por Stave el 17 feb. 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol 38: Scherchen Conducts Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C Minor (Historical Recording)
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Clásica - Editado por Archiphon el 4 ago. 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo