Tim Posner, Berner Symphonieorchester & Katharina Müllner - Bloch, Dohnányi, Bruch (2024)

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Tim Posner, Berner Symphonieorchester & Katharina Müllner - Bloch, Dohnányi, Bruch (2024)

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Like many musicians, Tim Posner was born into a musical environment. His father is was a violist, and his mother, a cellist, “quite naturally” became his first teacher. Apart from a passing desire to embark on a career as an opera singer – which even led him to play the shepherd boy in Tosca at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden! – the prospect of a life dedicated to the cello became clear from the age of thirteen, fuelled in particular by his early discovery of the infinite field of chamber music. After studying at the Junior Department of the Royal Academy of Music, Tim Posner crossed the Channel at eighteen to join Leonid Gorokhov’s (winner of the First Prize at the Geneva competition in 1986) prestigious class at the Hochschule für Musik in Hanover at the age of eighteen. In addition, he regularly benefits from Steven Isserlis’ wisdom during masterclasses, which proved to be a decisive source of inspiration. He has since enjoyed a flourishing career, dividing his time between engagements as a soloist and chamber musician. In 2010, he founded the Teyber Trio with Tim Crawford and Timothy Ridout, with whom he is still active. He has also recently been appointed principal cello of Amsterdam Sinfonietta.

Following Tim Posner’s recording debut of a Concertante by the English romantic composer Cipriani Potter (with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales), this is his first major recording. Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo was the piece that stood out and around which the whole programme was built. “It’s a work that I’ve loved since childhood, and that I’ve always wanted to play, but as it requires a large-scale orchestra, the occasion never arose, so it’s a fantastic opportunity to finally be able to fulfill this dream here alongside Katharina Müllner and the Berner Symphonieorchester. Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, another work with Hebrew resonance, was a natural choice. To follow in the footsteps of these two composers, we could have added Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Concerto, the work of a magnificent musician who had to flee Europe because of his Jewish origins. However, I preferred to opt for contrast and originality by following the suggestion of a friend who introduced me to Ernö Dohnányi’s underplayed Konzertstück. This jubilant work could not offer a more striking counterpoint to the tragedy of Schelomo.”

Ernest Bloch, a composer and violinist born in Geneva, studied with his compatriot Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels and Claude Debussy in Paris. After moving to the United States in 1916, he became the first head of the Cleveland Conservatory four years later before taking over as director of the San Francisco Conservatory. His music is strongly influenced by his Jewish culture, which he considered the only source for “producing alive and meaningful music”. Schelomo is one of the emblematic works of this legacy. The work was composed in the early months of the composer’s new American life. Bloch says he originally conceived the idea of translating passages from Ecclesiastes in which a preacher likened to Solomon (Schelomo) would develop a meditation on the theme “all is vanity”. With his poor command of Hebrew and his dissatisfaction with adaptations of the poem in Western languages, the composer finally decided to entrust the preacher’s voice to the warm, low tones of the cello. This piece of great instrumental and expressive density was first presented to the public on 3 May 1917 in New York by Hans Kindler and the Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer, who also gave his “Israel” Symphony during the same concert. [..] - Antonin Scherrer