Nils Mönkemeyer Performs Peter Ruzicka's Viola Concerto, "DEPART"

Released on the NEOS label, the disc is the fifth instalment in a complete set of works by Ruzicka

The NEOS label is in the process of recording the complete works of the German composer Peter Ruzicka, and has recently released Volume 5 of the collection. This disc features violist Nils Mönkemeyer in a performance of DEPART, Ruzicka's concerto for the instrument.

The concerto is an obituary of sorts for the Romanian-French poet and Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, who drowned in the River Seine in 1970. It is unclear whether the act was a suicide, but Celan's final diary entry reads "Départ Paul," and it is from this short but expressive line that Ruzicka took his cue for the work.

A past student of Hans Werner Henze and Hans Otte, Peter Ruzicka has been a professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg since 1990. He is also a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and of the Free Academy of Arts in Hamburg.

Ruzicka's works have been performed by orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Symphony Orchestra of the Bavarian Radio Munich, NDR Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.

His major works include the operas Celan, which was premiered in Dresden in 2001, and Hoelderlin, which was premiered at the Berlin State Opera in 2008.

You can purchase the album here.

PC: Irène Zandel