Bittner Julius: String Quartets

A good year younger than Max Reger and five months older than Arnold Schönberg, the Viennese Julius Bittner (1874-1939) earned his living as a lawyer for a long time. Nevertheless, he was already one of the most frequently performed Austrian opera composers before he gave up this activity in 1922. His one-act opera Das höllisch Gold, which premiered in 1916, was particularly well received, as were a number of his instrumental works - even though (or because) he was anything but a "neo-tonalist": he was rooted in melody, had freed himself from the Wagnerian grip and had become "folksy", as in the two string quartets (1913 and 1917) with their "pastoral" flair. In some passages, the older of the two works in particular seems like a "chamber music Mahler" - possibly a posthumous homage to the former patron who had given Bittner's talent the right direction.