ECHO Klassik 2002 within the category "World Premiere Recording of the Year"! Hartmann's five one-act operas, which had their first premiere (for which we have to thank Hans Werner Henze) 58 (!) years after their composition, are interesting not only as documents of the musical life of the late twenties in Munich, but also as information about the early work of an artist who is known in the history of twentieth-century music not as a composer for the theater but rather as a composer of symphonies. These one-act operas are documents of their time especially in their use of texts that criticize and satirize their society, that capture distinct situations from life in a spotlight, and that typify the characters so that the ensemble of the acts does seem like a wax museum - that is, the pieces depict people who do not develop (hence, wax figures) in a way that establishes distance, tends toward the comic, and is a little didactic. - This CD is a great rarity.