Beer-Walbrunn: Works for Violin and Piano (Bayer Records)

[Wheesht]

A new CD with works for violin and pino by Anton Beer-Walbrunn has just been released by Bayer Records, with world premiere recordings of:

Kleine Fantasie für Violine und Klavier g-moll (1891) op. 3
Sonate für Violine und Klavier d-moll (1905) op. 30
6 Melodien nach deutschen Volksliedern für Violine und Klavier in leichter Bearbeitung (1915) op. 42/3

Ursula Schoch, violin and Marcel Worms, piano.

The CD is not yet available through the usual channels, but it can be obtained for a special price of 15 EUR plus p&p from:

Anton Beer-Walbrunn - Kunst- und Kulturverein Kohlberg e. V., Feldafinger Straße 42, D-82343 Pöcking
Martin Valeske, Vorsitzender

m.valeske@t-online.de

[semloh]

I had never heard of this composer, but I see from his Wikipedia page that he was prolific. All six recordings noted in discography.com have been issued by Bayer. A chapter of Suum Cuique; essays in music (1916), by Oscar Sonneck, which can be downloaded from the Internet Archive, is devoted to him.

[eschiss1]

The sonata was only published in 1911; I've added the composition date to IMSLP's information. (And op.3 seems not to have been published- by Schmid- before 1897...)

[Wheesht]

Information from the booklet notes:
Beer-Walbrunn dedicated the sonata to the violinist Felix Berber (1871-1930) and the pianist Bernard Stavenhagen (1862-1914), who gave it its splendid premiere in Munich in 1906 and went on to perform it over the following seasons to growing acclaim. It was published by Wunderhorn in 1911.
Op. 3 was published in 1899 by C. F. Peters, it was first performed by Beer-Walbrunn, piano, and the violin virtuoso Josef Hösl (1869-1941) in Munich in around 1904.

[Alan Howe]

Could you describe the idiom of the music, please?

[eschiss1]

From the looks of the score, the 2-movement D minor violin sonata is quite Romantic, and the same is probably true of the earlier cello sonata (Op.15) and 3rd string quartet (Op.14) not here recorded but also available on IMSLP (which date from a few years earlier, 1890s rather than 1905). IMSLP doesn't have scores of Op.3 or Op.42 yet but I imagine much the same might be true of Op.3 especially given the 1891 date; Op.42/3- don't know (well, maybe there's a recording on YouTube or something...)
(The earlier works were published as by "Anton Beer", btw.)

[eschiss1]

There have been a few other CDs with his music - lieder, organ music, piano works, cello music ("und ausgewählte Lieder") (including his Ode op.20 as well as his cello sonata), mostly on Bayer Records and mostly in the second half of the 2010s.