Carl Frühling (1868-1937)

[SadRobotSings]

So as a clarinetist Carl Frühling's clarinet trio Op. 40 has been somewhat on my radar for the last few years, but when  actually went looking for information on him I didn't find much. I did however find a really interesting article about how the cellist Steven Isserlis pretty much single-handedly picked him out of obscurity. Isserlis seems like the kind of person who would enjoy posting here!

http://www.theguardian.com/friday_review/story/0,3605,377775,00.html

Several things about his article really struck me.

I then took the trio to a chamber music festival in Finland, and tried it through there, with a (bad) musician who played it so miserably it sounded boring, and then refused to perform it because it was boring. (It is alarming how often wonderful lesser-known works are written off for that reason.)

As a conservatory study I have to agree that I've met a lot of players who are pretty closed-minded. It takes a true musician to recognize the potential in piece they've never heard before.

Another of the long-suffering unfortunates who had to endure my whining was the soprano Felicity Lott, who inadvertently stumbled across a major reason for his neglect. On a visit to Vienna she dutifully enquired whether they had any information at the Austrian radio station where she had been recording. They pulled out a dusty old file - and to everybody's embarrassment, discovered a large "J" scrawled over it. So now we knew that Frühling was Jewish and as such had been neglected in the years immediately after his death.

Having been studying some other Jewish composers recently, notably Robert Kahn, I'm a little surprised that the seemingly overwhelming Nazi influence on the artistic community is something that isn't acknowledged and talked about more today. I haven't seen that new George Clooney movie Monuments Men, but it seems to be about this very subject.

I'm listening to his Piano Quintet Op. 30 right now, which I found here on this site, and I think it's great! If you haven't heard the clarinet trio, it really is fantastic as well. Anyway his wikipedia article lists a bunch of other works, but apparently they are all lost or missing. I wonder if they'll ever turn up?

[eschiss1]

Some other works listed in Worldcat and hopefully still available somewhere (unless libraries are listing them but really haven't checked whether they're still in the stacks) include
*Phantasie über Boris Godunow von Modest Mussorgsky : für Klavier zu 2 Händen (pub.1913, Universal Edition)
*Phantasie über Die Walküre (1913)
*And some other such operatic fantasies (likewise) (three of these are at IMSLP, I see.)
*Fantasie für Flöte : per flauto e pianoforte, op. 55 (pub.2009) (ms of this is at the Austrian national library (Mus.Hs.23373 Mus), which also has the ms of the 1892 piano quintet)
*Quartett in D Dur für Clavier, Violine, Viola u. Violoncello : op. 35 (Flonzaley Quartet collection; manuscript in ink - New York Public Library, New York Public Library. Hrm. Now -this- is interesting...)
*Various and sundry sets of lieder (in some Austrian libraries)

[Simon]

The Österreichische Nationalbibliothek also owns, among some music manuscripts by Frühling, his biography (unfortunately it does not seem to be available online).

[SadRobotSings]

*Quartett in D Dur für Clavier, Violine, Viola u. Violoncello : op. 35 (Flonzaley Quartet collection; manuscript in ink - New York Public Library, New York Public Library. Hrm. Now -this- is interesting...)

I just got a photocopy of this from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, which seems to be the only other place that has it. It looks like a really interesting score, here are the movements:

I. Allegro moderato
II. Scherzo - Trio
III. Larghetto - Con moto appassionato
IV. Finale - Vivace - Molto piu Moderato

I might be able to scan it, although it's pretty large, and over a hundred pages...

[eschiss1]

That would be really neat, if it proved possible (though difficult, I know!...) (Not sure when it was composed, but a biography entry for him in 1911 mentions it. I'm guessing from the intended opus number- assuming it was not in fact published - that it was composed somewhat after the piano quintet was composed in 1892; so twixt 1892 and 1911?...)

[eschiss1]

I see the piano quartet was perhaps given its modern premiere (or maybe even just its premiere) in 2000 - see that same article in the Guardian above

[FBerwald]

Has his piano concerto survived?