German Music Folder

[ahinton]

Re: Trunk, et al., it's a very interesting question about whether we should honour this music even by listening to it today. Given that a good deal of Trunk's music was written pre-Nazi era (I'm just downloading the Piano Quintet, for example), I think it's slightly presumptious for people to "ban" it on the grounds of what he signed up to later. The same, after all, would go for Prokofiev who, if I'm not mistaken, wrote a piece in honour of Stalin, no less a monster than Hitler. But it's rather easier for "history" to condemn lesser composers than greater ones whose music, quite obviously, it would be more costly to discard on the grounds of political/historical importunity. Well, I'm going to give it a listen ...

Many thanks for your wisdom and eminently pragmatic good sense here. Let's also remember that, following what might reasonably be regarded as the crowning glory of his achievement as a composer, Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln, the German composer Franz Schmidt was asked to compose a work in honour of the achievements of the Third Reich and he agreed to do it, knowing, however, that he was dying and, despite whatever pressure might have been placed upon him in the meantime, he would never fully realise that non-ambition...

[Mark Thomas]

Banning the music of any composer is to my mind an action, whether perpetrated by a state or by an individual, which tells you more about the banner than the banned. What purpose is served now by denying an audience to music written by a long dead composer whatever his faults as an individual? It's an action as empty of real meaning as the current fad for politicians to apologise for events which occurred hundreds of years ago.

[ahinton]

Indeed...

[eschiss1]

Will see if I can find out anything about the publication or other dates for Unger's works.
BTW Zilcher's 2nd violin concerto was his opus 92, published in reduction in 1943. I know it was uploaded quite some while back, but I think I only just figured that out.

[eschiss1]

Surprisingly, there's a East German CD, it seems, with works by Stephan (Musik für Sieben Seiteninstrumente) and Unger, containing Unger's opus 39 for piano quintet (1979 recordings, remastered, if I read right.) Wolfgang Kaiser, Anita Felzmann (in the Stephan) and members of the Collegium con Basso. Hopefully the recordings of the Unger in the downloads section were all from the same concert (despite the two different string quartets) and therefore the quintet couldn't have been from this CD. Will see if I can find out the timing of the quintet on the CD somehow, though.

[britishcomposer]

The op. 39 definitely WAS from the same concert, I faded out the applause and the announcer. 

[eschiss1]

ah good. btw the Munich? BSB library claims the date of composition of opus 39 is 1921; that's one down

I've seen a good number of works by Trunk (less by Unger) mentioned in 20th-century issues of HMB, it will be interesting to hear these (three to start with, will download more later *g*). So thanks!

[britishcomposer]

Thanks, Eric, I have amended my post! 

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks, yet again, BritishComposer for an upload. This time it's Kupkovic's Piano Quartet which, as you say, is anachronistically Mendelssohnian although I think that there's more than a hint here and there of minimalism a la Glass or Adams. Fascinating.

[Sydney Grew]

Banning the music of any composer is to my mind an action, whether perpetrated by a state or by an individual, which tells you more about the banner than the banned. . . .

I have long had a soft spot for poor old Richard Trunk (1879 to 1968); all he really wanted to do was write beautiful music for male-voice choirs and a bit of chamber-music as well. But he is now very much a non-person.

And then there is Webern's climbing companion Ludwig Zenk (1900 to 1949). I posted one of his pianoforte sonatas here a few months ago, as broadcast by the B.B.C. in 1964. But since those days he too has fallen into extreme disfavour, and even Grove's Dictionary has expunged his very name!

[JimL]

I heartily concur with the views expressed by Mark and Alan on Wilhelm Berger's chamber music.  The Clarinet trio is interesting and attractive although I'm not convinced that he has fully absorbed the Reger-like chromatic language into his structural argument -- but maybe that's an aberrant perception based on the strength of a single hearing;  I'll be giving it another go, to be sure.  The String Quintet, on the other hand, seems to me to be a masterpiece of the front rank -- "and I am unanimous in that".     Many thanks to britishcomposer for the upload.

Ditto on the Quintet.  Now I'm really interested in the performers on that.  That was a professional bunch, not a ragtag assortment.  Is there some sort of archive where I can get that information?

[JimL]

What with it being the 4th of July, and me off work, I have been downloading various odds and ends.  I particularly wanted to get the Volbach Symphony.  Is there any information anywhere on the tempi of the scherzo and finale movements?  I believe Ilja posted somewhere he had a copy of the score.

[eschiss1]

Volbach symphony:
from here: (program notes to the first performance of the work in Boston (subsidiary clause important there) on December 25 (rehearsal) and 26 (concert), 1914. Karl Muck, conducting. If you can read the notes, I expect, as often with the Boston Symphony notes of the era, there's much more interesting than just the movement headings- those notes tended towards the -very- informative; a program for a Gernsheim performance listed many of his works together with premiere dates, .. etc. ... .. .anyway. According to the notes the premiere tout court of the Volbach symphony was June 5 1909 in Stuttgart, by the way. It was performed in Philadelphia in 1910, so by Boston premiere I do not mean US premiere. The notes give dedication and some description of each movement- Tovey didn't write them but they're still quite good )

1. Lebhaft und trotzig
2. Presto
3. Adagio molto
4. Mächtig, feierlich - Lebhaft, bestimmt.

[Dundonnell]

Elroel....

The first of the two links for the Cilensek Symphony No.1 is coming up as "invalid"

[fr8nks]

I am having the same problem.