Fritz Brun CDs on GUILD

[Alan Howe]

Thanks, Adriano! At last the view of a Brun expert! So helpful.

May we say, then, that the issue for Brun and other composers like him was how to maintain confidence in tonality while certain others were abandoning it - or is it more complicated than that?

[adriano]

I think so, Alan. But, as many other "tonal" composers of that time, Brun just liked to experiment with atonality. He even tried out, for example, to work with an extended theme made up of all 12 chromatic notes, but still sounding melodic within a cleverly constructed accompaniment.
He too he may have been concientious enough to think about who will have to listen to his music - as every "honest" (or, let's say "fair") composer should do :-)

Respighi, for example, comes up in some of his later works with very unusual harsh dissonances; but such "episodes" may still look as "homages" to his more "modern" colleagues. In "Feste Romane" he also homages Stravinsky's "Petrushka".

One must not forget that since the beginning of the 20t century, our musical ears have been "educated" considerably - allowing us to be able to hear more dissonances without always needing to stop them. It's mostly a question of goodwill and personal attitude towards the arts. This "educational development" also happened in the domain of pop music and jazz - thanks to many forward-thinking composers, who cleverly "experimented". The same happened to our eyes in the field of figurative arts. In my life I was able to approach more music lovers to modern/dissonant music than I ever thought. It depends how this "education" is done.

After David Hurwitz's thundering negative review on Brun - based on just one CD (definitely the wrong one) - I suggested him to listen to more music by this composer, but he refused. He had made his opinion without listening to Brun's lyric and differently constructed works - ignoring that composers can stylistically develop!

[Alan Howe]

he may have been concientious enough to think about who will have to listen to his music

That's a generous thought. I personally cannot listen to much of the mature Schoenberg however hard I try. But Brun is a different matter altogether: with him I understand the music scaffolding he tries to construct...

[adriano]

Thanks, Alan! And, of course, there is the legitimate "de gustibus..." effect too :-)

[Alan Howe]

I'll take mature Brun over mature Schoenberg every time!

[adriano]

Well, the "mature" Brun (if we consider this term chronologically) confirms to be a return to post-Romantic tonality...

As far as I can remember right now - without digging into my archive - Brun conducted also works by "unusual" composers like Braunfels, Nicodé, Vladigerov, Szymanowski and Delius.
Works by Reger, Kodaly, Strawinsky, Mahler and Hindemith were quite unusual for Berne between 1910 and 1940 too. I could even find a 1937 mentioning of Shostakowich's First Symphony, but not its confirming evening program leaflet.
Besides this, he premiered and conducted works by practically all his Swiss contemporaries, starting from Schoeck and Honegger.
But Brun's main repertoire involved the big "B"s (Bruckner included), Mozart - and Berlioz (one of his favorite composers). He would have loved a definitely more experimental repertoire, as I could learn from his letters.

[adriano]

Alan, what about changing the title of this thread, eliminating "GUILD" and just mentioning "on CD", since Guild CDs are officially no more available, and the Brilliant Classics Box is still actual. So we could also consider new Brun CDs as:

https://prospero-classical.com/album/fritz-brun-early-chamber-music/

and:

https://vdegallo.com/en/produit/fritz-brun-violin-sonata-no-1-in-d-minor-violin-sonata-no-2-in-d-major-cello-sonata-in-f-minor-alessandro-fagiuoli-alessia-toffanin-andrea-musto/

[Alan Howe]

what about changing the title of this thread

Unfortunately I don't know how to do this without changing each individual post!

But thanks for all this fascinating information on Brun and his historical context.

The Prospero CD has been noted here:
https://prospero-classical.com/album/fritz-brun-early-chamber-music/

Thanks, though, for the link to the Gallo CD.