Ewald Straesser (1867-1933), born Burscheid, died Stuttgart

[jerfilm]

What I was clumsily trying to say, Jerfilm, is that there should be a centralized spot on this site where all the participants could upload otherwise unavailable recordings

Oh, my apologies, dafrieze, I completely misread your suggestion.  Which was a great idea.  My old brain just doesn't compute like it used to.   Which is the only excuse I can think of.......

Jerry

[eschiss1]

really should see if I can find a copy of that worklist-book somewhere other than the British Library btw the 5th symphony is in G major and was premiered in or before 1923 (the conductor who premiered it, Karl Panzner, has a German Wikipedia article, in which the fact that he premiered it is mentioned. He died in 1923, which tends to imply the rest...)
Eric

[jerfilm]

Though I wonder - especially on the evidence too of his own clarinet quintet - if he was the clarinettist E. Straesser who is mentioned as having taken part in some performances Stateside in 1891?...

Seems to me that would be a huge coincidence.  Betcha it is him.

Jerry

[eschiss1]

hrm. I'm no longer so sure- I think whoever this E. Straesser was (no first name given in full after all?) was first clarinettist of the Boston Symphony in the late 19th century or so. that information -may- be possible to work out. (then again, I was looking into someone who was one of the first conductors of a 2nd-or-so - but not third or fourth, I think...- tier American orchestra- and more info than that about him ? well, there were his (not Straesser, this was someone else.) compositions uploaded and scanned in to memory.loc.gov- but - that was it... one mention I think at the orchestra website, no... amazing I thought...erm. sorry. sorry.)

[oldman]

As an aside, an interesting anectodal description of Ewald Straesser can be found at:


http://books.google.com/books?id=64t28UCLJyMC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=ewald+straesser&source=bl&ots=NA6YHShqKa&sig=EvxxT5NXtNCogP6qgk11jWIfYyw&hl=en&ei=Ck7yTcPIOoGTtwf6qcGSAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=ewald%20straesser&f=false

[eschiss1]

I enjoyed reading that. Thank you.
Have been spending my restful (and rest) day putting together a partial list of his works right now over at imslp (with as good sources as I can, of course).  Interesting. I still haven't downloaded the piano concerto (whether or not complete or a 3-movement revision of a work originally in 4, or whathave)...
I wonder if the other orchestral works (non-concerto non-symphony that is - Fruhlingsbilder pub.1916 op.35,   Tragödien-Ouv. op4 pub.1896) have been performed or even broadcast lately.

[Mark Thomas]

The Fruehlingsbilder were obviously broadcast recently, Eric, as they're amongst the off-air recordings I uploaded  and are available in the companion board to this one.

[eschiss1]

whoops!!... ah. so op.1 is a concert overture, is it... *hastily fills in the gap in the IMSLP list whilst no one is looking... *

[eschiss1]

listening to sym. 1 now and if I may say- cpo or some similar company really should, in my honest opinion, grab at this and his others . I enjoyed his quartets very much indeed but (and) this is really lovely (and imaginative)!!

[eschiss1]

Apparently Furtwangler conducted two Straesser symphonies in 1924 and 1927 (no.4 opus 46 and no.6 opus 50) according to the Tahra website, if there's no typos involved etc. (I thought sym6 wasn't premiered until 1933 or a bit later). No mention of any tapes surviving, though, I think
(ok, op46 is symphony no.4, from another document, not at tahra but at a furtwangler.net site.) 

Someone may have conducted symphony no.4 opus 46 in E minor in Stuttgart ca.1921 (Zeitschrift für Musik 88Jg (1921 year), page 555. Either a review of a performance, or a note of a performance scheduled- if the latter, may not have happened; my notes taken down in the library ages ago (as detailed a bit boringly in another thread ) don't seem to distinguish between the two; and I had never heard of Straesser when I wrote those notes (from which the ZM-related info is taken), was just writing down performance info about people I knew of- Raff, Draeseke- and didn't. May have some little use, but should have written more info than less. - 9-19 edit. (Never helped that I don't know much German, Gothic-lettered or otherwise- though when the subject is music I make do. Anyhow. Right.))

[eschiss1]

modified subject line belatedly in response to reasonable request

[semloh]

Just a quick 'thank you' for the STRÄßER uploads. What an enjoyable morning I've had - it's all so good. I can't understand why these aren't on LP - CD. The orchestral pieces are charming and the Piano Concerto is inventive and would surely have become a 'lollipop' - to borrow a term - had it been issued on CFP or, latterly, Naxos.

I speak entirely as a naive listener, and do wonder about their technical quality as compositions. Am I right in thinking that they are rather loosely structured works, and that the ideas tumble out rather than evolve? What's the general opinion of Sträßer among musicians?

[eschiss1]

Didn't know there was a general opinion of him (though I'm not a musician in the sense of playing an instrument, which I haven't done at all in years.) Never heard of him until last year, I think, when I saw the parts to one of his quartets uploaded to the digitization section at Sibley Library/University of Rochester. Never heard him until Steve's Bedroom Band performed that quartet (his 1st, of 1902 iirc) and his 4th (published 1920) which I think is still my favorite piece of his- and the overall structure of that one is bound together by recurring motifs (whether the individual movements themselves hang together- I'd still say yes, but could I prove it? Maybe.)

[JimL]

I'll have to give the PC another listen, but it did seem to me that, at first hearing, the work definitely had a sort of "stop and start" feel to it, as if there were spots where the seams showed.

[semloh]

JimL - that was just the kind of description that I would have used if I had the nous to think of it!