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
-
Mozart: Requiem in D minor, K.626 (Remastered 2023, Vienna 1953)
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Vienna State Opera Chorus
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording on Jul. 22, 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mozart: Requiem in D minor, K. 626 by Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording on Mar. 23, 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler Pioneers
London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Walter Goehr, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by SOMM Recordings on Jul. 21, 2023
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Dvořák: Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" & Cello Concerto in B Minor (Remastered 2022)
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Pierre Fournier, Vladimir Golschmann, Orchestra della Radio Svizzera Italiana, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Archipel on Oct. 7, 2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: St. John Passion, BWV 245 by Hermann Scherchen (2023 Remastered, Vienna 1962)
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Vienna State Opera Chorus
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording on Oct. 3, 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
J.S. Bach: Cantatas, BWV 32, 53, 54, 170, 76, 84, 106, 140, 198 & 210 (Remastered 2023)
Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, Hermann Scherchen, Magda László, Hilde Rössel-Majdan
Classical - Released by Archipel on Dec. 1, 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Mass in B minor, BWV 232 by Hermann Scherchen (2023 Remastered, Vienna 1959)
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Vienna State Opera Chorus
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording on Jul. 24, 2023
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Scheherazade - The Flight of the Bumble Bee
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Classical - Released by Mangora Classical on Nov. 26, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Concerto pour piano No. 4 (Mono Version)
Paul Badura-Skoda, Hermann Scherchen, Orchestre de l'opéra d'état de Vienne
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on Jan. 1, 1958
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen dirige Haydn (Hermann Scherchen)
Classical - Released by Tahra on Oct. 20, 2009
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade, Op. 35
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Archipel on Feb. 11, 2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 22: Scherchen Conducts Rossini's William Tell & Various Overtures
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Archiphon on Sep. 4, 2015
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Scherchen conducts Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2
Hermann Scherchen, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra
Symphonic Music - Released by Urania Records on Mar. 15, 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach : La Passion selon St Matthieu (Hermann Scherchen, direction)
Sacred Vocal Music - Released by Tahra on Aug. 26, 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn: The Seven Last Words of Christ (Oratorio) by Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Chorus, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording on Jan. 15, 2022
24-Bit 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
The 1950s Haydn Symphonies Recordings
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Jan. 1, 2003
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Scherchen conducts Beethoven
Hermann Scherchen, Ludwig van Beethoven
Classical - Released by UME - Global Clearing House on Jan. 30, 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Honegger : Pacific 231 - Stravinsky : Petrouchka
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Symphonic Music - Released by Westminster on Jan. 1, 1955
The Qobuz Essential Discography16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphonies No. 3 "Eroica" & No. 5
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Apr. 24, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
SCHOENBERG: PELLEAS UND MELISANDE "SYMPHONISCHE DICHTUNG FÜR ORCHESTER"; FRIEDE AUF ERDEN; ERWARTUNG (AUFNAHME OHNE SOLOSTIMME)
Classical - Released by Nar Classical on Apr. 12, 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Handel: Der Messias, HWV 56 (Mono Version)
Pierrette Alarie, Orchestre de l'opéra d'état de Vienne, Hermann Scherchen
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on Jan. 1, 1960
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo