Fritz Brun - Complete Orchestral Works on Brilliant Classics

[Tapiola]

@hadrianus, thanks for the interesting feedback. I'm aware about desincouraging people by negative commentaries, and I hope mine don't give a bad impression on the composer's music. I sometimes don't know how "to measure" my words when refering to music, they are not always accurate, I'm simply a classical music fanatic listener with no musical education.

What do you mean by "particularly memorable"? That you cannot sing the tunes yourself...

Not necessarily, it also depends on the development, the kind of atmosphere, comfort, thrill, enjoyment and pleasure music gives me. There is music that is exciting but lacks tunes, it's still memorable for me, or it has a brooding atmosphere but it's not so exciting, even so the music is memorable too, etc.

Some Brun's inner symphonies (4-7 or so), have an intricated development, which made my listening experience somewhat hard, and yes, there are no memorable melodies/tunes, which helped to not like them or appreciate them better. Curiously, I remember that the last symphonies (8-10) somehow made more sense for me. I haven't said I'm going to give up either. I intend to listen to the complete symphonies to get better ideas of them.

Finally, it would be quite rewarding to read your liner notes since you are the Brun expert and you conducted the works. Thanks for reading!

[Alan Howe]

there are no memorable melodies/tunes

Well, this isn't Tchaikovsky. There's memorable material, but it's often tough. This music takes work - that's what makes it so rewarding.

[Mark Thomas]

SymphonicAddict wrote:

it would be quite rewarding to read your liner notes

Hadrianus' booklet notes can be downloaded from the Brilliant web site here.

[adriano]

@SymphonicAddict et al.

You are right, Symphonies 8-10 could make "more sense" to many music lovers, since they are more melodically conceived. This can be explained: Brun had retired from his conducting post and could finally enjoy the love of his wife and children 24 hours a day - in his beautiful house in Southern Switzerland (I was there several times). All of his friends and colleagues travelled down there to visit, the guestbooks have a lot of entries by famous Swiss artists of that time. And valuable painting and scupltures by those friends are placed in all rooms.

The composer reveals his source of inspiration of those three Symphonies (8-10) in his program notes (see booklet). In other words, such an atmosphere must inspire to more lyricism.
His Piano and Cello Concertos are also from that period.

Here is a short video I've made about this house, which at the beginning was but a little Grotto Ticinese (restaurant)
(German texts are only at the beginning; the rest is just music):

https://vimeo.com/242782145?activityReferer=1

Like Mahler and Furtwängler, for example, Brun could not spend a lot of time for composing.
During his 1903-1941 career as a permanent conductor of the Berne Symphony Orchestra, as a leader of two choirs, as a chamber music player and as a Lieder accompanyist, Brun had not always an easy life. A lot of studying, reherasing - and many struggles with his orchestra manager as far as the programming is concerned - and all the bureaucracy in connection with adminstration activities at the Schweizerischer Tonkünstlerverein.

In Berne there was the "rival" orchestra of the Bernischer Musikverein, offering more progressive programs including more works by Strauss, Mahler and music by various Russian composers (Stravinsky was very well-represented there). Brun's "Bernische Musikgesellschaft" had a more traditional repertoire - and the maestro was not always very happy to have to preserve this image. Only in the 1930s more "modern" or "unsung" works were finally included (there is, for example, a concert program of 1937 featuring Shostakovitch's First Symphony). Brun could perform several Beethoven and Brahms cycles, but with Bruckner and Schumann, for example, he achieved complete cycles only over several years. These were reasons for him to get furious by seeing that his competitors were doing a complete Mahler cycle - and that he had already to struggle for "Das Lied von der Erde" and Mahler's Fourth. Still, he was allowed to perform almost all of Berlios works - one of his beloved composers. He adored "La Damnation de Faust".
Brun's aim was also to perform/premiere various works by contemporary Swiss composers, including Hermann Suter's "Le Laudi" (a work he not only performed in Berne's Cathedral, but also (in 1926) at the Paris Trocadéro in presence of the composer and in front of an audience of 5000 perople).
Incidentally, he was also responsible for the Italian premiere (1923, in Rome) of Bach's Mass in B Minor!
Besides the Berne subscription concerts with his ensemble, Brun also performed a lot of big choral works in Berne's Cathedral and dozens a-cappella and with piano-recitals with his choirs - in another Berne Church. As far as I remember, Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis" five times and Bach's and Händel's great oratorios repeatedly too. In the same cathedral, Berlioz's and Verdi's Requiem and Wolf Ferrari's "La Vita Nuova" were als performed with great success.
At the occassion of great choral concerts, Brun had schedules like this: Friday: dress rehearsal (audiences were allowed) - Saturday morning: choral matinée with various programs and Brun at the piano or conducting - Saturday evening: the main concert - Sunday afternoon (or evening): a repetition of the concert. Those matinées (also in the Cathedral) had various and very unusual programs, not necessarily in accordance with the pricipal concerts.
Once Brun had programmed Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms" and Caplets "Le Miroir de Jésus. Just before the concert-hall doors were opened, there was an announcement that this concert had to be cancelled because not enough tickets had been sold; this was a unique case in Brun's career. On the other hand, Brun's "rival" orchestra never had problems with Stravinsky - that may have been an intrigue thing. Since he loved the Caplet piece (requiring a smaller ensemble), Brun performed it later in one of his matinées. The management would not risk a Stravinsky again with Brun - so the choirs had rehearsed "Symphony of Psalms" for nothing. With other, similarly demanding contemporary choral works, there were no problems like this...

This just to let you have a glimpse of Brun's years in Berne.

[M. Yaskovsky]

Price change! https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/detail/-/art/fritz-brun-complete-orchestral-works/hnum/8968194

[eschiss1]

I find the conducting repertoire of musical figures I'm interested in to be itself very interesting (Liszt's, too, comes to mind), so thank you.