String Trios by Julius Zellner & Richard von Perger

[Alan Howe]

...forthcoming from Centaur:
https://recordsinternational.com/cd.php?cd=08T005

[Alan Howe]

More on von Perger at this earlier thread;
http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,4882.msg52131.html#msg52131

[eschiss1]

and at least one thread on Zellner here.  Good to see a commercial recording of the Perger. I see there's a IMSLP recording by Matesic of the Perger trio (and of his 2nd and 3rd string quartets) (for which thanks also).

IMSLP has the parts of Perger's piano quartet (in A, Op.14), first string quartet and string quintet (Op.10 in D), if anyone finds the other works good enough to want to look at anything else of his.

[eschiss1]

BTW, according to Austrian Library, Bernhard Päuler, indefatigable editor for Amadeus-Verlag of works by Perger and many others, died sometime this year?? (My mistake, an obit. notice gives 1932-27.7.2016. ... so last year, not this year. Bernhard Johannes Anton Päuler.)

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Eric.

[Alan Howe]

It takes a CD like this to make us realise what a huge treasure-trove of works there is 'out there' that have simply been buried and forgotten under the weight of compositions by composers who were either (undeniably) greater or just plain luckier.

So the String Trio in C minor, Op.36 (1881) by the Viennese Julius Zellner (1832-1900) may not have the depths or 'dark corners' of Brahms nor the forward-looking sonorities of, say, Draeseke, but what craftsmanship, what songfulness, what sheer joyfulness it exhibits! And, of course, Brahms never wrote a string trio, so here's a piece in a genre represented by a completely unsung composer just waiting to be re-admitted to the repertoire a century or more after it disappeared.

I thoroughly recommend this marvellously prepared, played and recorded CD. Purchase it while you can! Further comments on the von Perger when I get to it...