Viktor Ullmann / Rainer Maria Rilke: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke

Melodrama for narrator and piano

In a letter from spring 1918 to his then girlfriend Anny Wottitz, Viktor Ullmann asks for literature to be sent to the front. Among the books was Rilke's poem in prose "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke". Rilke's poem deals with Cornet's situation in the war against the Turks, in which he ultimately meets his death. Ullmann served as an ensign (cornet) in Italy during the First World War. As a soldier, he read the cycle of poems in verse while stationed there. In 1944, he turned the work into a melodrama for speaker and piano in the Theresienstadt concentration camp; Ullmann was deported to Auschwitz on October 16, 1944 and immediately murdered.

Senka Brankovic: piano
Helmut Mooshammer: Speaker

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