HK Gruber: Piano Concerto and Vienna Woods recording
Two major works by HK Gruber appear on disc for the first time in a new Capriccio recording by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer. Frank Dupree is soloist in the Piano Concerto which grew from the cabaret nightclub scene in Gruber’s Tales from the Vienna Woods, also heard on this recording in his orchestral suite from the opera, Short Stories.
Capriccio’s new all-HK Gruber recording is released on 13 February, with two major works joining his recorded catalogue for the first time. His Piano Concerto, completed in 2016, features Frank Dupree as soloist, with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. The new recording also includes the half-hour orchestral suite drawn from Gruber’s opera Tales from the Vienna Woods in 2019. Entitled Short Stories from the Vienna Woods, the seven extracts collect musical highlights from Gruber’s highly successful adaptation of Ödön von Horváth’s play, first staged at the Bregenz Festival in 2014. Frank Dupree is also heard in Gruber’s solo piano cycle Luftschlösser (Castles in the Air), dating from earlier in the composer’s career, completing the Capriccio recording.
The Piano Concerto was originally composed for soloist Emmanuel Ax and is a set of developing variations based on a kernel of ‘shimmy’ music heard in the nightclub scene from Gruber’s Tales from the Vienna Woods. The composer observed a seeming contradiction between how this cabaret music appeared simple and emotionless but provided an effective counterpoint to the powerful drama in the foreground. Gruber noted that in all his concertos “I’ve viewed the soloist as at the tip of a symphonic iceberg. In the Piano Concerto the orchestra provides an echo chamber for the material of the pianist, whose 'factual' discourse is resonated through tuned percussion and harp.”
In a Capriccio video introducing the new recording pianist Frank Dupree commented that “It’s a large piano concerto, of course, with a large orchestra and a strong part for the soloist and also lots of percussion. HK Gruber is always hiding syncopations somewhere. And that makes his music a little dance-like. There are always rhythmic shifts, accents, syncopations. Your antennae have to be perked and then you get to add your part to the mix. The 12-note row is, in fact, always hidden in the music somewhere, which keeps it extremely varied. And yet, you also have beautiful melodies in there, that you could whistle from the roof, and charming harmonic sequences. And those, interestingly, tend to sound a bit like jazz. I’m looking for contemporary piano concertos which we play today and which will be played in 50 years or, I hope, even 100 years from now… And I am convinced that this is one of them!”
> Watch the Capriccio introductory video
Gruber’s bitter-sweet opera Tales from the Vienna Woods draws on Ödön von Horváth’s classic play observing the disintegrated Viennese society of the late-1920s. It was unveiled at the 2014 Bregenz Festival and enjoyed further stagings at the Theater an der Wien, the Komische Oper in Berlin and the Theater Hagen. The Süddeutsche Zeitung described the opera as “a dance on the edge of the abyss, full of lust and greed” while Opera magazine noted how “Gruber could not resist weaving deconstructed snatches of the famous Strauss waltz into his fascinating, often beguiling orchestral fabric... this new, very well made opera deserves to travel as much as Horváth's play."
The orchestral suite Short Stories from the Vienna Woods, heard on the new recording, was crafted together by Gruber in 2019. It was first performed in a shortened form by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons in 2022, followed by its first complete performance by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Cristian M?celaru later that year. A further German performance took place in Mainz in 2024 leading up to its Austrian premiere in Vienna by the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra – a homecoming for the composer and the score – and its Czech premiere later the same year in Hradec Králové.
> Buy the new Gruber recording from Presto
Frankenstein!! is 50 in 2028
Looking further ahead, 25 November 2028 is the 50th anniversary of the first performance of Frankenstein!! conducted by the young Simon Rattle. Building upon an earlier suite, Gruber composed Frankenstein!! in the orchestral version we know today, which was premiered in 1978 with Gruber as chansonnier alongside Rattle at the helm of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. An ensemble version for 12 players plus chansonnier was unveiled the following year by Die Reihe in Berlin, making the score also available for smaller forces. Across its half century, Gruber’s work has enjoyed over 700 performances around the world and is firmly established as one of the most popular of all contemporary works.