S.Karg Elert - Piano Sonata No.3 Op.105 "Patetica" (1914)

Michael Zeeschang - Piano
Sigfried Karg-Elert (1877-1933) was a German Composer, better known for his works for Organ and Harmonium.
At a gathering of composers in Leipzig, he presented his first attempts at composition to the composer Emil von Reznicek, who arranged a three-year tuition-free scholarship at the Leipzig Conservatory. This enabled the young man to study with Salomon Jadassohn, Carl Reinecke, Alfred Reisenauer and Robert Teichmüller.
After having served as a regimental oboist during World War I, Karg-Elert was appointed instructor of music theory and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1919.

The cultural climate in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s was very hostile to the internationally oriented, French-influenced Karg-Elert; and although his works were admired outside Germany, especially in the U.K. (the Organ Music Society of London held a twelve-day festival in his honour in 1930, which he attended) and in the United States, in his home country his music was almost completely neglected. All this led to him accepting an invitation for an organ concert tour of America in the spring of 1932.
Karg-Elert was offered a position of the organ chair at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, which he was forced to decline due to his failing health.
After his return to Leipzig, his health started deteriorating rapidly. He died there in April 1933, aged 55.

Karg-Elert regarded himself as an outsider. Notable influences in his work include composers Johann Sebastian Bach (he often used the BACH motif in Bach's honour), Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin, and early Arnold Schoenberg. In general terms, his musical style can be characterised as being late-romantic with impressionistic and expressionistic tendencies. His profound knowledge of music theory allowed him to stretch the limits of traditional harmony without losing tonal coherence.
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