NDR Chamber Music Concert

Accomplishment and success at a young age, great personal tragedy and an early death – the parallels between the biographies of Hans Rott and Hugo Wolf are striking. While Wolf swiftly earned great acclaim as a lieder composer, and also left a small collection of sophisticated and wonderfully analytical chamber music works, Rott insistently strove to master the great forms such as the symphony. However, Rott’s String Quartet is a true rarity – and clearly also indicative of a fine musician of the chamber format.

Chamber music was Robert Fuchs’s true passion, and his oeuvre holds a number of surprises in store. »Fuchs is a splendid musician. Everything is so finely, deftly and delightfully invented,« said his famous contemporary Johannes Brahms. Maria Bach is another true revelation as a composer and painter. Her Romantic »Wolga Piano Quintet« made her Vienna’s best-known female composer, and she was the subject of enthusiastic discussion in newspapers and recognised as an independent voice. After the Second World War, her musical works were largely forgotten, while her artistic oeuvre became better known.