Program notes
In 2005, as part of the the hundredth anniversary of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Germany paid tribute to a hidden figure in the German music of the middle of the XXth century. Twenty years before this "Hartmann year", this documentary takes us into the heart of the composer's life and music.
Deeply in love with democracy, he is dismayed by the rise of the totalitarianism in Germany. During the advent of the Third Reich and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, he chose to withdraw from the German musical scene. In spite of his increasingly reputation, his music remained little-known in Germany.
At the end of the war in 1945, he founded in Munich musica viva, which is still one of the world's most famous events for contemporary music, where many experimental works and performances for orchestra and chamber music receive their premiere.
Disciple of Joseph Haas and Anton Webern, inspired by Gustav Mahler's late Romanticism or by Schönberg and Alban Berg's serial compositions, he left behind him a work mysterious and heterogeneous, at the crossroads of different styles that have spanned the 19th century.