Reger: Mozart Variations Op. 132 / Hiller Variations Op. 100

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Cat No: 8553079

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099407922

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: REGER

Description
Max Reger (1873 - 1916) Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 132 Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Hiller, Op. 100 Max Reger owed his early musical leanings to the example and enthusiasm of his father, a schoolmaster and amateur musician, and his early training to the town organist of Weiden, Adalbert Lindner. Reger was born in 1873 at Brand in the Upper Palatinate, Bavaria. The following year the family moved to Weiden and it was here that he spent his childhood and adolescence, entering a course of teacher training, when he left school. Lindner had sent examples of Reger's early work as a composer to Riemann, who accepted him as a pupil, initially in Sondershausen and then, as his assistant, in Wiesbaden. Military service, which affected Reger's health and spirits, was followed by a period at home with his parents in Weiden and a continuing series of compositions, in particular for the organ, including a monumental series of chorale fantasias and other compositions, often, it seems, designed to challenge the technique of his friend Karl Straube, a noted performer of Reger's organ compositions. In 1901 Reger moved to Munich, where he spent the next six years. His position in musical life was not without difficulty, since he was seen as a champion of absolute music and as hostile at this time to programme music, to the legacy of Wagner and Liszt. He was, however, successful as a pianist and was gradually able to find an audience for his music. The period in Munich saw the composition of his Sinfonietta, of chamber music and of his important Variations and Fugue on a Theme of J. S. Bach for piano, and the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Beethoven, the latter later orchestrated. In 1907 he took up an appointment as professor of composition at the University of Leipzig. His music now found a still wider international audience, supported by his own distinction as a performer, with concert appearances in London, St. Petersburg, the Netherlands and Austria, and throughout Germany. The year 1911 brought an invitation from the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen to accept the position of conductor of the court orchestra, an ensemble established by Hans von Bülow and once conducted by Richard Strauss at the outset of his career. Reger held this position until the beginning of the war, when the orchestra was disbanded, an event that coincided with his own earlier intention to resign. He spent his final years based in Jena, but continuing his activities as a composer and as a concert performer. He died in Leipzig in May 1916 on his way back from a concert tour of the Netherlands. Reger was a prolific composer, continuing the tradition of Bach, Mozart, and the great German composers of the nineteenth century, with a technical mastery and a command of harmonic and contrapuntal resources that allowed him to expand the bounds of tonality in chromatic exploration. His organ compositions represent a very significant addition to the repertoire of the instrum
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