Eduard Herrmann Sextet op. 33

[britishcomposer]

I have uploaded a recent broadcast of a Sextet by the German composer Eduard Herrmann (1850-1937).
The oboist of the ensemble, Nicolas Thiébaud, told how he discovered the piece. He was googling for music fitted to be performed by his unique ensemble of oboe, clarinet and strings and found the IMSLP site of this sextet, downloaded the score and was fascinated by the music. A nice story how the internet helps to discover rarely performed music.
You can listen to the whole concert if you like:
http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/festival-arabesques-hamburg-europaeisch-bereichert.1357.de.html?dram:article_id=379392

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks for this. I'd never heard of Eduard Herrmann, but I see that he was a German violinist, a pupil of Joachim and Kiel who emigrated to New York in 1881 and formed a well known quartet there. Amongst other things he composed an unpublished Violin Concerto in C major, and a Quintet, Quartet and Trio for strings, as well as this Sextet. A few of his scores (including the Sextet and the Trio) can be found at IMSLP here.

[Alan Howe]

Toskey lists Herrmann's VC. It's his Op.25, dated 1904. Apparently it was published by Wilhelm Schmid of Nuremberg.

[eschiss1]

Or perhaps Op.26 published 1904 (composition date not given) according to http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_works_by_Eduard_Herrmann. (Badly formatted; I'll see what I can do, later.)

I'm curious about his string quartets and quintets; I gather New York Public Library has some of this music but they don't interloan anymore over here (I requested a copy of a work of his a couple of years back, perhaps for scanning.)

[semloh]

Thank you giving us the opportunity to hear this lovely, relaxed music. Eduard Herrmann is new to me, and a quick search on the web indicated that he was an editor of major works by Bach, Mozart, etc.. He isn't included in any edition of Grove, or any of the books on my virtual shelf.  Unsung Composer, indeed!

[TerraEpon]

Interesting ensemble combination too.

[matesic]

You can hear excerpts of his string trio on editionsilvertrust.com. Its description as being "in a post-romantic style" I don't think quite captures the extent to which (in c.1920) Hermann was bravely holding out against modernism!

[Alan Howe]

'Post-romantic' is one of those slippery terms, isn't it? Sometimes it is used to mean music written in a style that is more advanced than romanticism; at others it seems to mean romantic-style music written in the post-romantic period.

[matesic]

I can see why an oboist would be attracted to the sextet. Although much of the string and clarinet writing seems to rely on rather conventional chordal sequences and arpeggiated configuration, the highly lyrical oboe part put me in mind of Strauss's concerto written 30 years later!