RUDI STEPHAN (1887-1915): Music for 7 String Instruments (Ensemble Aix), Music for Orchestra, GEORGE BUTTERWORTH (1875-1916): 2 English Idylls, A Shropshire Lad, The Banks of Green Willow.
Catalogue Number: 01Q011
Label: Coviello Classics
Reference: COV 91418
Format: SACD hybrid
Price: $19.98
Description: This coupling of music by the two best-known composers killed in the First World War restores to the catalogue Stephan's 1911 Music for 7 String Instruments (piano quintet + double bass and harp: this might be the first new recording since the 1992 Koch Schwann release) which, of course, like the revised version of Music for Orchestra of the following year, inhabits the same world as early Webern and Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Some of the gloom and anxiety you hear may be because you know Stephan was to die early but most of it is just in the zeitgeist. Aachen Symphony Orchestra; Kazem Abdullah.