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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Beethoven: 4 Danses allemandes, WoO 8 - Mozart: Une petite musique de nuit & Symphonie No. 38 "Prague" (Mono Version)
Hermann Scherchen, Wiener Symphoniker
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1959
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: Cantates, BWV 198 "Ode funèbre" & BWV 106 "Actus tragicus" (Mono Version)
Hermann Scherchen, Magda László, Orchestre de l'opéra d'état de Vienne
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1955
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen Conducts Bach and Schoenberg
Hermann Scherchen, Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Classical - Released by Tahra on 16 Dec 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Romeo and Juliet "Ouverture" - Gayne Ballet Suite - Night on Bald Mountain
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Classical - Released by Mangora Classical on 27 Nov 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Concerto in Do minore per pianoforte e orchestra No. 3, Op.37
Paul Badura-Skoda, Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Symphonic Music - Released by La Bambolina sas on 27 Feb 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Weber, Auber & Boieldieu: Ouvertures célèbres (Mono Version)
Orchestre du Theatre National De L'Opera De Paris, Hermann Scherchen
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1959
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 21: Scherchen Conducts French Overtures
Orchestre de l'Opera National de Paris, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Archiphon on 4 Sep 2015
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Hoffmann: Schlage doch, gewünschte Stunde - Bach: Cantates, BWV 54 & 170 (Mono Version)
Hilde Rössel-Majdan, Orchestre de l'opéra d'état de Vienne, Hermann Scherchen
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1955
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Bartók: Concerto pour piano No. 3, 9 Petites pièces pour piano & 3 Burlesques pour piano (Mono Version)
Edith Farnadi, Hermann Scherchen, Orchestre de l'opéra d'état de Vienne
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1959
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Rimsky-Korsakov: Sheherazade (Mono Version)
Orchestre de l'opéra d'état de Vienne, Hermann Scherchen
Miscellaneous - Released by BNF Collection on 1 Jan 1960
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 4: Scherchen Conducts Mozart's Requiem
Classical - Released by Archiphon on 26 Mar 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 9 in D Major
Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Orfeo on 1 Jan 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Liszt: Les préludes, S. 97, Battle of the Huns, S. 105 & 6 Hungarian Rhapsodies, S. 359
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Urania Records on 4 Mar 2013
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bach: The Saint-Matthew Passion
Hermann Scherchen, Orchestre de l'opéra de Vienne
Classical - Released by Tahra on 26 Aug 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Feminine Classical Music
Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen, Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra
Classical - Released by Music Manager on 4 Nov 2015
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 5
Symphonic Music - Released by Urania on 12 Apr 2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
J.S. Bach: Orchestral Suites Nos. 1-4, BWV 1066-1069 (Remastered 2024)
Hermann Scherchen, English Baroque Orchestra, Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera
Classical - Released by Archipel on 1 Mar 2024
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Haydn: Symphony No.100 in G Major 'Military'
Hermann Scherchen, Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Classical - Released by Classically on 19 Oct 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Franz Joseph Haydn, Vol. 2
Hermann Scherchen, Wiener Symphoniker
Classical - Released by ArnebAudio on 8 Feb 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Scherchen: 78 RPM Recordings, Vol. 2 – Zurich
Hermann Scherchen, Studio-Orchester Beromünster
Classical - Released by Archiphon on 22 Oct 2021
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 39: Scherchen Conducts Beethoven (Historical Recording)
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Archiphon on 18 Aug 2017
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo