Eduard Marxsen

[jonah]

Recent mention of Friedrich Brahms prompts me to ask whether anyone is aware of recordings (other than the CPO piano recital) of music by Eduard Marxsen, to whom Johannes Brahms dedicated his Piano Concerto 2.
He appears to have written five symphonies - candidates for CPO's admirable symphonies series perhaps?

[eschiss1]

It would be interesting to know more about Eduard Marxsen's life and music generally, I think. The published works that appeared between 1831 and 1884 in Hofmeister MB seem intriguing though some are probably on that cpo disc, will have to check (did it have piano sonatas?... ah, yes. Op8 in B-flat. There's a 4-hand sonata too, op.48, Easy Sonata, in A first(?) published 1844 (a score of this is at a Danish library, possibly the 1844 edition (both are Cranz publications), at the Aarhus Statsbiblioteket). Quite a lot of lieder.  RISM-online does list 3 fragmentary autographs of symphonies, in C minor, A minor and G minor, of his- no April Fools' joke that- at the Ossietzky library in Hamburg; hopefully they're not the only sources or if they are, they're not so fragmentary as not to be completable (4 movements are listed for the C minor symphony, and 100 folios of score, so I am guessing that fragmentary yes, dusty and nugatory no- I get the impression there's still a lot there... Other works are listed too, and in autograph rather than abschrift, which despite the messiness of autograph scores, I tend personally to prefer (... on trust grounds ).

At least one published orchestral work, actually... (from listing in HMB - )

Den Manen Beethoven's. Charakteristisches Tongemälde f. gr. Orchester mit 4 obl. Violoncells, einger. vom Componisten. (Op.60, published 1845. Seems to be ? an arrangement by the composer of a chamber work? Oh never mind- einger. vom Componisten means - this is in the piano duet section of HMB, and the duet reduction was made by the composer. I don't know if the orchestral score/parts was/were also published- this was somewhat rarer (well, it depends. Publishing full scores was for much of the 19th century very rare- in the USA. But that's the beginning of a serious digression... ) (BSB Munich has a copy of this but in that 1845 piano-duet arrangement.)

[John 514tga]

There is a Camerata album of 14 songs and three piano pieces (Camerata 28129).  Alexandra Coku, soprano, and Marcos Fink, baritone, are the singers.  Anthony Spiri is the pianist.

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=201011

[Balapoel]

a couple of symphonic arrangements I wouldn't mind hearing

arrangements
Symphony in A major (after Op. 47 von Beethoven) (UA 1835, Hamburg)
Symphony in a minor (after a Sonate von F. Schubert [D 845])   1845

originals
Symphony in c minor (UA des gesamten Werkes 1837, Hamburg)
Symphony in A   (same as arrangement?)
Symphony in g minor (UA 1845, Hamburg)

[eschiss1]

There's also a symphony in A minor by him, an incipit of whose first movement (doesn't look like Schubert's D 845) can be seen here (based on the fragmentary autograph I mentioned above - SBB(erlin) has, by way of Bibliotheca Hamburg and Friedrich August Cropp, fragmentary autographs of three symphonies by Marxsen and other works, including this A minor symphony and the other two you mention. Incipits for those in C Minor and G minor can be found here: (actually, my mistake, these latter two autographs aren't at Berlin, they're still at Carl von Ossietzky library, Hamburg...)

C minor (100 folios. Allegro energico/Andante/Allegro vivace/Moderato assai) - here

G minor (100 folios. Allegro spiritoso/Scherzo. Presto/Andante/Finale über den Octavensprung der Pauke aus der 9. Symphonie von Beethoven. Presto) - here.

[Alan Howe]

Friends may be interested in this introduction to a book about Marxsen and Brahms at Amazon.com:

Brahms once remarked that he had learned nothing from Eduard Marxsen, despite years of piano and composition instruction and a continuing correspondence after Brahms left Hamburg until Marxsen died. Whereas no one believes Brahms learned nothing from him, Marxsen's life, works, teaching principles, and composing practices have not been examined before in enough detail to determine exactly what the influences could have been. Therefore, the first two chapters of this study trace the life and works of Marxsen, drawing on little known sources for the first time. The various facets of his career---as a pianist, composer, critic, teacher, and Liedertafel director---are rebalanced to reflect their actual proportions, including the surprising discovery that he virtually stopped composing after 1849. Until now Marxsen has been characterized as a composer mainly of songs and piano pieces, but he clearly thought his most important compositions were his symphonic works, which have only recently become available for study. They reveal not only his reverence for Beethoven, but for Schubert---providing a more direct link to Brahms than has previously been established---and other Romantic trends. Occasional startling innovations, such as an overture that begins in one key and ends in another, stand next to more conventional procedures. The study of Marxsen's songs, piano pieces, and male choruses completes the picture of his cross-genre predilection for certain harmonic devices, idiosyncratic tempo and dynamic markings, variation techniques, and, perhaps most impressive, unusual and mixed meters, all of which resonated with Brahms. The third chapter details the association between Brahms and Marxsen, from the student years when Marxsen stressed varying a theme organically and sonata-form technique, through the letter-writing phase, when Brahms often sought his teacher's advice. Unpublished letters show Marxsen as a keen observer and an advisor who could be counted on for details. I also address Brahms's possible involvement in editing some of Marxsen's manuscripts. The final chapter discusses Marxsen's influences on Brahms's works. Of greatest significance are variation techniques and unusual rhythmic groupings, but also certain harmonic progressions and idiosyncratic tempo markings, and the expressive use of uncommon dynamic markings.

http://www.amazon.com/Eduard-Marxsen-Johannes-Brahms-Jaffe/dp/1243608129