Fritz Brun CDs on GUILD

[Maury]

I understand that although there would be no need to be exhaustive for each composer's symphonic output. Generally a composer has one or maybe two styles to consider and compare with others. But we are really handicapped in assessing them (in this site's case) for degrees and kinds of Romanticism. Brun's output has made that clearer to me.

[eschiss1]

Not sure if it was mentioned, but I was just looking at the availability of scores of Brun for me to browse and use via interlibrary loan and I see that some of the most recent, e.g. of a movement for piano quintet, a reduction of his 1947 cello concerto (published 2014) and the piano concerto (published 2012) (if a library in the US that loans to my library has this, I will certainly try to borrow this one or a full score if available, since the set I purchased includes recordings of the concertos) - were published by "Adriano Productions Morcote Erbengemeinschaft Fritz Brun" of Zürich. Cheers and thanks to the multitalented work of the conductor/publisher/record-label-owner.

[adriano]

Hi eschiss :-)
Thanks for your interest.
Try to find a way to send me your e-mail address ( or to find out mine) and I will be happy to send you more infos and PDFs of the Brun scores which I have edited.
As far as Brun's orchestral scores are concerned, except Symphonies 2, 3 and 4 (which were published by Hug & Co.), they never have been printed, they exists in MS form only. The problem is, that these MS are (unfortunately!) owned by the Paul Sacher Foundation, so even my hands are bound.

By the way, the score of Brun's Cello Sonata has just been released (for the first time) by Musikproduktion Höflich, and Brun's First String Quartet is in the cannel for 2025.
https://repertoire-explorer.musikmph.de/de/produkt/brun-fritz/

I've also realised a 3 1/2 hour's Fritz Brun documentary film, with 1 1/2 hours bonus tracks, including a few studio session sequences. The film is in German, and not commercially available, but I can send you its link too. It's in 27 chapters, with many musical examples and documents, easily consultable. I've often "visualizied" the musical examples with graphic interpretations of existing art pictures, or with Swiss landscape sequences.
It would be a total financial flop to have this 5-DVD-box published commercially! Swiss and German TV stations (and arte) were not even interested in a 55-minute's version of this documentary; they found that Brun had not been known enough outside Switzerland - a thing which today one can be discussed about...

And here is a link to my (too voluminous for a CD box) booklet of my "complete" Brun recordings on Brilliant Records
https://www.mediafire.com/file/rf7q4zb8sqeh80z/FRITZ_BRUN_-_Booklet_Brilliant_Classics_95784.pdf/file

@Maury: Why ist it always necessary to define and classify (music) styles? But sometimes this can help music lovers to be better introduced to less-known pieces.

[eschiss1]

Thank you for the latter link (ordinarily I'd be able to download it given that I purchased the set itself, but Amazon no longer recognizes a lot of those purchases I made, it seems- I think I see why in some cases.)

[Maury]

Adriano,

 Nice to have you back on the site. In case you don't know (mentioned on a dfferent thread) I started acquiring your CD issues 30 years ago and am a fan.

As a scientist I enjoy understanding things but to your point, it is not me personally fetishizing categories but people in general. I am on a couple of other music boards and genre classification is the source of a lot of discussion. (Of course this site is entirely based on genre classification.) There's not an unlimited amount of time to repeatedly listen to each composer and work in a normal music library. By placing a work in a genre people can quickly understand the degree to which it fits the category. This aids comprehension. To have to maintain a memory of 50 works as independent unrelated things is difficult. Much easier to say that those 50 works fall into 3 genres.

Further, it was your recordings of the Brun symphonies that forced this more to my attention as I had trouble figuring out what he was trying to do (apart from the conventional Sym 1). But I began to see similarities with several other of his contemporaries such as Bendix, Hermann, Langgaard, some of Lajtha. On reflection they seemed to be moving towards a different kind of Romanticism (if we still want to call it that) more along the lines of pastoral styles but not exactly. Sibelius called his Symphony 6 a poem, so I will call this possible style poetic Romanticism, since it frees it from the overly specific pastoralism. My thoughts are not settled so I would be very interested in having a couple of Brun's scores to examine other than the Sym 1. I am currently going through the score of the Bendix Sym 3. Regards

PS Downloaded the Brun booklet. Thanks

[eschiss1]

Incidentally, there is as of last month a new publication (link to PDF preface of score, not to the score itself) of Brun's cello sonata available from MPH Munich... (of which I see you are not unaware, perhaps- "Note setting and editing: Adriano, Zürich." Thanks there too...)

[adriano]

@ eschiss
Yes, eschiss, but my new link is to a slighly revised version of the "booklet" :-)
I annouced the puslishing of the Brun Cello Sonata in my earlier posting already .

@Maury
Thanks for your compliments!
To be "simple" (but sorry if I just write this down in a hurry):
Brun started à la Brahms - and very sporadically, sometimes even with a smile, he later rarely on comes back to him. In his 2nd Symphony he consciously homages his friend Othmar Schoeck's "song-like" lyricism - and their common love for Romaticism (its Scherzo is not at all my faourite, but how wonderful is the slow movement and what a humourous finale!). In his 3rd Symphony he exeriments with extreme chromaticism and daring counterpoint - except in the slow mouvement, which forebodes alreay his later, more "modern" style - and how he can still write great lyrical music with dissonances. But its last movement is romantic again, perhaps not a a really good piece. In his 4th, in a way he justifies his good-bye to Bruckner (and faithfulness to Brahms), but at the beginning of its last movement he even tries to write aleatorically. In his 5th he uses Baroque forms with dissonaces, but also homages Berlioz (one of his favourite composers). And so he goes on, and he never wanted to repeat himself! In this 9th, he creates a sort of "Sinfonia Domestica" (but a less painfully inflated one than Strauss's) - and in his 10th I feel a homage to Robert Schumann! His most perfect Symphony may be his 8th. (I adore it), but in there he also has daring - and long - row-motivs containing all 12 notes! Its slow movement (perhaps a bit too long), is a set of variations (like the slow movement of the 3rd.) and its scherzo is a tricky "serenade" for bass-clarinet solo and a transparent nocturnal orchestra. The 6th and 7th use also Baroque forms with daring dissonaces and homages to Schoeck and to Berlioz.
But all this is pure and honest Brun. An unprepared listener needs patience to get into this rather complex world.
Do also listen to his early, fascinating and deeply humanly felt tone poem "Aus dem Buch Hiob".
And his later great "Symphonischer Prolog" should also be performed and appreciated: it's a very difficult, but imprtessive piece, in which the composer let us feel his believe in life and happiness that World War II was just reaching its end!
And what about his concertante works? Just listen to the (very originally scored) slow movements of his Piano and Cello Concerto!
Or that short, very daring (and difficult) "Verheissung" for chorus and large orchestra!
Last but not least: Brun's music is not a typically "conductor-composer's" music, but a "composer-conductor's" one. Similarly to Furtwängler, composing would have been his main goal. But as a young man already, a good conducting post was offerd to him, so he worked 38 years as a "subscription concert" maestro with  a main repertoire concentrating to Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner. At the same time he had to lead two chrouses, allowing him to perfom the greatest masses and oratorios of music history from Bach to Honegger.
Brun was also a frequent - and much appreciated pianist in chamber concerts and song recitals! Like Ansermet, had his orchestra under total control - guest conductors were very seldomly invited. Brun even had not time to be invited to conduct other orchestra. Occasional guest appearences were in Zurich and in Geneva. Following rare "foreign" apperances as for the (Italian first!) performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor, sigle Festival concerts in Leipzig, Paris and Vienna, Brun did not reach an European renown - simply because he was not at all interested.
After he had decided to retire, the orchestra management started to realise that his successor would never be able to cope with such enormous duites as a conductor, chorus leader and chamber musician.
This large working schedule gave him little time spend in creating music. And familiar duties were also there to accomplish

[Maury]

Adriano,

 Thank you very much for your detailed response. FYI, I do have your large Brun box. At least I wasn't going crazy that something significant happened to Brun's symphonic intentions after the Sym 1. There was a 10 year gap between Sym 1 and 2 which is a bit unusual for someone who composed 10 eventually. (Do you happen to know if Brun heard the Sibelius Sym 3 or the later Bendix symphonies 3-4 during this period?)

Your comments about his compositional process in his later symphonies are very interesting and helpful. All I can say is that I hear a certain consistency of musical rhetoric and organizational process (at the sectional level) from Sym 2 all the way through to 10 despite any shift in his "influences" or surface technique.

I would very much be interested in seeing a few of his symphonic scores if the copyright terms permit. In the US anything before 1924 is public domain. So Sym 2 and 3 would meet that cutoff at least. If there any fees please advise.  Regards

[eschiss1]

Maury: no. in the US anything first given US publication before 1929 is public domain. (Next year that becomes before 1930). Unpublished (manuscript only) works have separate rules. And not all works first published after 1928 are still in copyright- it has to do with regular renewal with the Library of Congress, or applying for... etc, etc. ...

[Maury]

Eschiss,
I didn't realize they were progressing the date. I believe it started at 1924. As for the nuances yes I am familiar with them but didn't want to over-complicate it with Adriano. but thanks for stating them. Some full post with copyright details for the US EU and perhaps elsewhere might be a useful sticky for reference. 

[eschiss1]

(BTW it looks like symphony no.4 may have been published in 1929 by Hug, so it may be in the US public domain in 2025. It's unclear whether symphonies 1 and 5-10 exist otherwise than as manuscript, as archive-copies made in 2007 etc., though again that doesn't always mean necessarily still in copyright everywhere . Also, the +95 rule doesn't apply to newer publications; works published or registered in the US since 2003 are in copyright
"Irrespective of when a work was created, its term if first published or registered in 2003 or later (including if it is still unpublished) is as follows:

If the work is by a known individual author with a known death date: 70 years from the author's death"

[eschiss1]

Maury: it was a law having to do with renewal, whose copyright-related breakyear consequence was basically "before "1923" or "this year - 96", whichever is later". In 2019, for the first time, the second part was greater than the first part, and has been increasing ever since.

[Maury]

eschiss,
thank you very much for the info on arcane legal workings of the copyright code. The irony is that in 2024 google etc have effectively killed copyright.

As for the scores I assume Adriano had to have had a conductor's score for these works whether printed  or original. Also these works were performed back when Brun was alive. Doesn't his estate have all of the scores and parts? 

[eschiss1]

The notes to the cello sonata point out the location of its two sources, one @  the manuscript collection of the Paul Sacher Archive and Research Center in Basle (Switzerland), one "Fritz Brun Estate Collection at the Music Department of the Zurich Central Library, are deposited a reproduction of the transcript" by an unknown copyrist. So there seem to be multiple locations for at least some of his manuscripts for such works as symphonies 1 & 5-10 e.g. for which published scores do not appear to exist (or need correction when they do).
Apologies for the lengthy digression!

[Maury]

No need to apologize when you are not at fault. These are digressions on topic not unrelated. But thanks for the additional info which seems clear and what would be expected.