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
-
SCHOENBERG: PELLEAS UND MELISANDE "SYMPHONISCHE DICHTUNG FÜR ORCHESTER"; FRIEDE AUF ERDEN; ERWARTUNG (AUFNAHME OHNE SOLOSTIMME)
Klassik - Erschienen bei Nar Classical am 12.04.2023
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
Verschiedenes - Erschienen bei BNF Collection am 01.01.1960
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
J.S. Bach: Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080 (Transcr. R. Vuataz)
Beromunster Radio Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Klassik - Erschienen bei Archipel am 01.01.2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vivaldi: Les quatre saisons
Julian Olevski, Hermann Scherchen, Orchestre de l'opéra de Vienne
Klassik - Erschienen bei Puzzle Productions am 01.01.2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Handel: Water Music Suites Nos. 1-3 (Remastered 2022)
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Klassik - Erschienen bei Archipel am 01.07.2022
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: The Musical Offering BWV 1079
Hermann Scherchen, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra
Klassik - Erschienen bei Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording am 28.06.2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Johann Sebastian Bach: Messe en si mineur, BWV 232 (Hohe Messe)
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Wiener Akademie Kammerchor
Klassik - Erschienen bei Tahra am 12.06.2012
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos.3 "Eroica" & 6 "Pastoral"
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Klassik - Erschienen bei Westminster am 01.01.2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
J.S. Bach: Musikalisches Opfer, BWV 1079 (Arr. for Chamber Ensemble by Roger Vuataz) (Remastered 2024)
Wiener Symphoniker, Hermann Scherchen
Kammermusik - Erschienen bei Archipel am 02.02.2024
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Schoenberg: 5 Orchesterstücke, Op. 16, Erwartung, Op. 17 & Die glückliche Hand, Op. 18 (Live)
Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Hermann Scherchen, Kieth Engen, Magda László, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Klassik - Erschienen bei Orfeo am 01.01.2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 19: Scherchen Conducts the Russians
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Klassik - Erschienen bei Archiphon am 02.06.2015
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Works
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen, Lucretia West
Klassik - Erschienen bei Andromeda am 12.03.2021
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Johann Sebastian Bach : Musikalisches Opfer : Musical Offering BWV 1079
Klassik - Erschienen bei OperaPrima-Carillon am 01.01.2004
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen dirige Wagner (Siegfried-Idyll) et Tchaikovsky (Symphonie n° 6) / 1960
Klassik - Erschienen bei Alexandre Bak - Tahra am 01.04.2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier
Pop - Erschienen bei INA Mémoire vive am 13.09.2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 - 9 (Scherchen Edition)
Hermann Scherchen, Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper
Symphonieorchester - Erschienen bei The Golden Legacy of Music am 12.08.2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Historical Mahler, Vol. 3 (Remastered 2023)
Hermann Scherchen, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra
Klassik - Erschienen bei Urania Records am 31.01.2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 1: Hermann Scherchen Conducts Haydn
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper
Klassik - Erschienen bei Archiphon am 07.08.2012
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Overtures I
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Klassik - Erschienen bei Deutsche Grammophon (DG) am 24.04.2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gustav Mahler par Hermann Scherchen
Klassik - Erschienen bei Tahra am 05.04.2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies; Mazeppa; Les Préludes
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Klassik - Erschienen bei Deutsche Grammophon (DG) am 01.01.2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo