Nina Karmon - Labor: Piano Quintet in E Minor, Op. 3 & Piano Quartet in C Major, Op. 6 (2019)

Josef Labor (1842-1924) was a pianist and organist recognised throughout Europe and a celebrity of the Viennese music scene. At the age of three, his eyesight fell victim to the pox. Until now, Labor has been the subject of limited musicological research. He was not an expressive musician in the mould of the late Romantics; he made his own life the starting point for his art. Nor was he a musical innovator, or simply a conservative. The constant principle in his music is one of Viennese classical aesthetics emphasising a clear formal structure with balanced proportions. Consequently, he shows himself to be unimpressed by the vehement conflicts in his day between followers of the progressive German composers and the less progressive supporters of Brahms. During his lifetime, Labor was viewed by his own generation as an outsider, a composer who trod a solitary path and positioned himself in a very special way as an independent spirit of the age.