Richard Fuchs

[mikehopf]

I came across this wonderful composer by accident. There were some songs broadcast on a New Zealand radio station by "R.Fuchs"which I recorded , naturally thinking of Robert. They were in fact by Richard Fuchs ( 1887-1947), a German Jewish composer who was imprisoned in Dachau; but escaped to New Zealand. Please do yourselves a favour and go on to the Richard Fuchs Archive website where you can download his powerful Mahlerian symphony together with two Piano Quintets; a couple of String Quartets and an abundance of songs.
There is also a DVD of his life and works called The Third Richard... Wagner, Strauss and Fuchs(?)

[jerfilm]

At 14:41 is that the entire symphony or just a single movement?  The site suggests it's the whole thing......

J

[Alan Howe]

Yes, it's all rather unclear.

[Mark Thomas]

It was written as a symphony in one movement, Jerry, and then used as the opening movement of a larger piece: www.richardfuchs.org.nz/compositions_detail.php?id=39. There's some very attractive music amongst the recordings which you can listen to, by the sound of it. Well worth exploring this site. Thanks, Mike.

[jerfilm]

Thanks, Mark.   Having now listened to the symphony and the 1931 Piano Quintet in D,  I'm inclined to say that Fuchs may be a late romantic, but I'd put the emphasis on "late".   There are some lovely melodies here and also some other moments when these old ears simply can't decipher what Fuchs was trying to say.   But that's my problem.  I'll be curious to hear what others have to say.

Jerry

[eschiss1]

I also wonder whether there weren't two 20th century Richard Fuchs...; the one born 1887 would have had to have been quite prodigious (not impossible, just more than Korngold-level prodigious, but not quite Mozart) to have been the responsible composer for the more than 60-odd? I think? published works attributed to Richard Fuchs (which are not by Robert Fuchs, though a few times they are misattributed to Robert Fuchs!) in first-decade-of-the-20th-century issues of Hofmeisters Monatsberichte (almost entirely vocal/choral works)...

[mikehopf]

Eric's 60 plus compositions must include his numerous songs. He was an architect by profession and seems to only have taken up serious composing in the 1930s. A full biography is to be found on Wikipaedia.