ORFEO International – Reviews

Important Releases Briefly Introduced

March 2010

Peter von Winter

Posterity has not been kind to the composer Peter von Winter. He was a wunderkind in the Mannheim Court Orchestra who after its removal to Munich worked as its kapellmeister.
C 751 101 ABut his music today is as good as forgotten. And yet he was in Vienna and Italy a celebrated opera composer of international standing. He was praised by colleagues such as Carl Maria von Weber and Louis Spohr, which in itself is a sign of how he served as a model to the Romantics, not least in his art of instrumentation. It is this last point that is taken up by Dieter Klöcker and the Consortium Classicum. At a time when Beethoven’s septets became regarded as ideal examples of how to write chamber music for strings and wind combined, it was in this very field that Peter von Winter displayed all his gifts for melody and instrumentation. In the Quartet, Septet and Octet that are on this new recording of the Consortium Classicum, we find different styles from the outgoing 18th century, both contrasted and fused together. We hear with astonishment motives that are prescient of Schubert and his Octet, alongside contemporary polonaise forms and other latently “national” elements. Winter here pays homage to the same European spirit as do Beethoven and Haydn in their “British” cycles of songs. The pre-Romantic atmosphere provided by the horns is interrupted by virtuosic elements that no member of the Consortium Classicum can let pass him by. And the master clarinettist Dieter Klöcker is a match even for the music’s “operatic” moments in technically difficult registers. Given the multifarious compositional gifts on display here, plus his inventive use of wind instruments, it is no surprise that Winter not only met Mozart several times, but even wrote a sequel to the Magic Flute with Mozart’s librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, entitled The Labyrinth. The impression left by Dieter Klöcker and the Consortium Classicum (as also on their CD Orfeo C 192 031 featuring concertos, symphonies and an aria for soprano and concertante clarinet) will perhaps at last prompt renewed interest in Winter’s operas.