Schoeck was brilliant at first drafts. His operas Venus and Schloss Dürande were finished at a feverish tempo, essentially before the libretti were completed. Such a phenomenal process of sound-sculpting aims to go directly to the very core of the matter, to the essentials. The process of fine tuning – making sure that everything sits properly – was of secondary importance to him. That’s why many of Schoeck’s works can so easily be arranged and orchestrated, as long as their fiery core is protected. The little gem that is Sommernacht, composed for the Bern Symphony Orchestra, is here performed in a version for solo strings and large string orchestra. It flirts a little with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, though without moving in similarly radical, harmonic spaces. Sounds of nature such as birdsong, then bells, a distant reminiscence of accordion music, the glittering starry sky and the cries of the farmers – all these are embedded in a musical material that already been long out of fashion when the work was first performed in 1945. But just as in his other works, Schoeck succeeds here, too, in turning backward-looking techniques into something highly individual, something hitherto unheard-of and timeless. It’s simply a fact that while Othmar Schoeck at first glance might seem perfectly bourgeois in appearance, he is in fact, regardless of his attire, an unwieldy revolutionary – a wolf in sheep’s clothing. - Musiques Suisses