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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Bach: The Musical Offering BWV 1079
Hermann Scherchen, Wiener Philharmonic Orchestra
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Classical Music Reference Recording on Jun 28, 2021
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos.3 "Eroica" & 6 "Pastoral"
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Westminster on Jan 1, 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
Chamber Music - Released by Archipel on Feb 2, 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
Classical - Released by Orfeo on Jan 1, 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
LP Pure, Vol. 19: Scherchen Conducts the Russians
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Archiphon on Jun 2, 2015
24-Bit 96.0 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Works
London Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen, Lucretia West
Classical - Released by Andromeda on Mar 12, 2021
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
BERG: LULU SUITE "SYMPHONISCHE STÜCKE AUS DER OPER LULU", DER WEIN "KONZERTARIE", LYRIC SUITE "LYRISCHE SUITE"
Classical - Released by Nar Classical on Jul 10, 2023
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Hermann Scherchen dirige Wagner (Siegfried-Idyll) et Tchaikovsky (Symphonie n° 6) / 1960
Classical - Released by Alexandre Bak - Tahra on Apr 1, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier
Pop - Released by INA Mémoire vive on Sep 13, 2007
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Historical Mahler, Vol. 3 (Remastered 2023)
Hermann Scherchen, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra
Classical - Released by Urania Records on Jan 31, 2024
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Overtures I
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Apr 24, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Gustav Mahler par Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Tahra on Apr 5, 2011
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsodies; Mazeppa; Les Préludes
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Jan 1, 2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Scherchen Conducts Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Others
Symphonic Music - Released by Urania on Feb 8, 2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Handel: Water Music / Torelli, Vivaldi: Trumpet Concertos
Roger Delmotte, Arthur Haneuse, Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Westminster on Jan 1, 1961
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Prokofiev: Scythian Suite; Lieutenant Kijé / Khachaturian: Gayaneh
Wiener Symphoniker, Vienna State Opera Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Westminster on Jan 1, 2002
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 6
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Apr 24, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Overtures II
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, English Baroque Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Apr 24, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphonies No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36; No. 4 in B-Flat Major, Op. 60 & No. 8 in F Major, Op. 93
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Jan 1, 2014
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Beethoven: Symphony No. 7 & Wellington's Victory
Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Deutsche Grammophon (DG) on Apr 24, 2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Mahler: Symphony No. 7 in E Minor
Wiener Symphoniker, Hermann Scherchen
Classical - Released by Orfeo on Jan 1, 2016
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo