Franz Schreker (1878–1934):
Overture to the opera ‘Die Gezeichneten’ (1913–15
shortened version)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957):
Sinfonietta, Op. 5 (1912)
Ernst Krenek (1900–91):
Potpourri, Op. 54 (1927)

While the three composers featured on this recording are not, in the public perception and sometimes even in that of the performers, among the most significant exponents of Viennese music in the first half of the twentieth century, their remarkably expressive and virtuoso writing is deeply rooted in fin-de-siecle Vienna. They were banned by the dictatorships of the 1930s and then blacklisted in the aftermath of the Second World War by the young European avant-garde, and it is only in recent years that the beauty and opulence of their works have been rediscovered. Vienna-born conductor Sascha Goetzel writes about the works performed here with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire: ‘With Korngold, Schreker and Krenek, we’re not just hearing music – we’re entering a dialogue between past and present, tradition and rebellion, myth and modernity […] Korngold embodies the emotional sincerity and creative ambition of the late Romantic tradition. Schreker immerses us in the subconscious – mythical, unstable, and rich in feeling. Krenek breaks through the façade, injecting irony, jazz and fragmentation into the orchestral form […] In their own ways, each composer pushes back against inherited conventions to discover new languages of sound.’