Victor Urbancic: Vorahnung

Description

Born in Vienna in 1903, Victor Urbancic held a variety of positions in German and Austrian musical life, including Kapellmeister at the Stadttheater Mainz, professor of music theory, piano and accompaniment and deputy director at the Graz Conservatory, as well as lecturer in musicology at the University of Graz before he was forced into exile in 1938 by the Nazi regime (since his wife Melitta Grunbaum was Jewish). After unsuccessful attempts to get a job in Switzerland or the USA, Urbancic decided - made possible by a fellow student - to flee to Iceland, where he worked at the Reykjavik Music School within a very short time, and over the years became a key figure in the Icelandic music scene while teaching at what then became the Reykjavik Conservatory. The Austrian soprano Marina Colda, together with Julia Tinhof, piano, presents songs by Victor Urbancic on this album by the title "Vorahnung" (Foreshadowing). The title is borrowed from the eponymous song from 1920 to the sombre lyrics by Edward Morike, which against the background of Urbancic's life story seems like an actual premonition of his fate. The vast majority of these songs were created in the time before his exile, as he was confronted with an extremely demanding workload in Iceland, and adhere to a somewhat late Romanticistic style of composing.