Various - Paul Graener: Orchestral Works IV

Paul Graener was a latest romanticist with a strong inclination for French impressionism � which as a composer in the Germany of the first half of the twentieth century makes him a unique case. This month cpo is presenting three of his concertos on our fourth Graener CD. Hardly any other companion of Paul Graener�s so intensely supported his oeuvre as did the cellist Paul Gr�mmer, the dedicatee of this composer�s Cello Concerto and the soloist at its premiere in 1927. The time of composition of Graener�s last finished composition, his Flute Concerto, coincides with the increasing bombardment and destruction of Berlin. Here it is above all the last movement that stands out and attracts our attention � and does so not so much because of its neoclassical guise, something already to be encountered in Graener�s works of the 1930s, but rather on account of his choice of the life-affirming folk song, which displays a cheerful mood that can be harmonized neither with the difficult circumstances of Graener�s life nor with the wartime events taking place at that time.