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Fritz Brun: a Swiss Symphonist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Extract
Ferruccio Busoni, who saw out the First World War from the neutral haven of Switzerland, maintained that the best Swiss symphony was Rossini's William Tell overture. Not that the country was completely lacking in resident composers of symphonic music during the Classical and Romantic eras. There was, for example, Gaspard Fritz (d.1783), whom Dr Bumey met in Geneva. There was Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee (d.1868), whose works include an amiable ‘Military’ Symphony. But the dominant force in the 19th century was the composer, publisher and pedagogue Hans Georg Nägeli, whose primary achievement was to develop a choral tradition. Instrumental music in Switzerland depended largely on imports. Joachim Raff, who came from the Lake Zurich region, did not begin to find his feet as a symphonist until he settled in Germany. The vocal bias persisted into the 20th century: thus Othmar Schoeck could say that writing a violin sonata was something of a ‘crime’ for him.
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References
1 See my record review in Tempo No.185, 06 1993, pp. 58–9Google Scholar.
2 Olaf Henzold conducts the AML Luzerner Sinfonie orchester in works by Wagner, Fritz Brun and Josef Lauber. Gallo CD-838 (co-production with Swiss Radio DRS).
3 Welcome as the trilingual documentation accompanying this disc is, the translations betray signs of haste. The French text takes Hesse's mysterious string player to be a lutenist, the English proposes a harp. In fact the lines come from the poem Eine Geíge in den Gärten (‘A Violin in the Gardens’).
4 No solo piano pieces are included in Willy Tautenhahn's work-list (typescript, 1978), which is the fullest I have seen.
5 Rudolf Baumgartner conducts the Lucerne Festival Strings in works by Peter Benary, Brun, Caspar Diethelm, Albert Jenny, Peter Leisegang and Richard Rosenberg; the pianist is Patrizio Mazzola. Gallo CD-727 (with Swiss Radio DRS).
6 Hans Huber also made use of die concerto grosso form when he recast his Fourth Symphony for piano, organ, string quintet and string orchestra.
7 According to Tautenhahn, however, Volkmar Andreae conducted die première at die Lucerne Festival of the Swiss Composers' Association.