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Contents:
DDD 61'30" Recorded: Neumünster Zürich – 8-14 May 2002 Swiss Organ Music of the 20th Century Paul Müller-Zürich was born on June 19th 1898 in Zurich. He studied at the Zurich Conservatory with Philipp Jarnach and Volkmar Andreae and continued his studies in Paris. In 1927 he became a teacher at the Zurich Conservatory. He was a teacher, conductor, composer and arranger and one of the most important musical personalities in Swiss musical life of the 20th century. In 1953 Müller was awarded the Music Prize of the City of Zurich and in 1958 he was awarded the Kompositionspreis des Schweizerischen Tonkünstlervereins (Composers’ Award of the Swiss Society for Music Artists), whose president he became in 1960. Müller’s work encompasses almost all genres; today he is particularly known for his organ works. Paul Müller-Zürich died on July 21st 1993 in Lucerne. He left his musical work to the Zentralbibliothek Zürich (the Central Library in Zurich). The Konzert für Orgel und Orchester (Concerto for Organ and Orchestra) op. 28 belongs to a series of orchestral works which were composed in the 1930s and were inspired by Alexander Schaichet, who was the founder and director of the first Zürcher Kammerorchester. The neo-classical concerto was premiered in November 1938 by the organist of the Berne Minster Kurt Wolfgang Senn and the Zürcher Kammerorchester with the composer as conductor and since then has been performed regularly. On this CD we can hear a version which was revised by the composer in 1978. Paul Müller revised the organ part in several places, where he thinned out and highlighted the contrapuntal movement without changing the harmonic progress of the piece. The first movement, a Toccata in the baroque style, leaves the organ plenty of opportunity for solo display. The restrained Aria Variata presents a theme with five variations, distinguished by its fine harmonies. The brilliant final movement takes the form of a rondo and puts considerable demand on the player. The virtuoso Toccata I in C was composed thirteen years earlier. It too reveals, in its structure and tempos, Paul Müller’s roots in the Germanic tradition of organ compostition which stemmed from J. S. Bach. Hans Schaeuble, born in 1906 in Arosa, attended the Kantonsschule, first in Trogen and then in Lausanne, where the performances of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under the direction of Ernest Ansermet, mainly of French music, led him to wish to dedicate himself entirely to music. From 1927 to 1931 he studied at the Leipziger Konservatorium – just like many other Swiss composers (such as Othmar Schoeck) before him – with Hermann Grabner (composition) and Carl Adolf Martienssen (piano). In 1931 Schaeuble moved to Berlin. His initial successes as a composer in the concert hall and in radio were rewarded by the offer of a contract with the publishers Bote und Bock. His Sinfonische Musik für grosses Orchester op. 22 was premiered in 1939 by the Berlin Philharmonic with Carl Schuricht as conductor. In the same year Schaeuble returned to his homeland. In the summer of 1941, when the danger of war seemed temporarily to have receded for Switzerland, he returned to Berlin, where he remained until the autumn of 1942. This contributed to the fact that in the time after the war Schaeuble was often accused of having been too “German-friendly” during the Third Reich. Schaeuble was not able to repeat his pre-war successes as a composer after 1945. Although he himself flirted with dodecaphonic music in some of his works, like the Piano Concerto op. 34 of 1949, he increasingly disliked the music of his younger contemporaries. He composed less and less, and in the end only worked on repeated revisions of his earlier works. When he died in 1988 in Zurich, a foundation for young musicians and musicologists was set up according to his wishes. The Präludium op. 15 was composed around 1930 in Berlin. It was originally titled Introduction and formed the introduction to the Geistliche Abendmusik, which consisted of a cantata, choral variations for organ and a motet. Later on Schaeuble declared the work as a whole invalid and dissected it. However, the Präludium remained and has been performed repeatedly since the 1930s in concert programmes in Germany and Switzerland. The various revisions which Schaeuble made to this work show the value he put on his “small and somehow loved jewel” (“kleines irgendwie geliebtes Juwel“) (Diary IX, 1980). In 1941 he made an orchestral version, which was premiered in the following year by Ernest Ansermet in Geneva. This recording contains the final version of the organ piece, which was created in 1980 for a gala concert with the Hottinger composers of the Kreuzkirche Zurich. The tempos and structure of the piece show clear influences of the neo-baroque organ movement, but with Schaeuble sound and sound effects came first and the linear organisation of the movement plays a subordinate role. Adolf Brunner, born on June 25th 1901 in Zurich, had his first lessons in composition with his uncle, the composer Hans Lavater. He studied piano with Walter Frey. From 1921 to 1925 he continued his studies in Berlin with Philipp Jarnach, Franz Schreker, Walther Gmeindl and Siegfried Ochs. Among his fellow students were Jerzy Fitelberg, Ernst Pepping and Berthold Goldschmidt. His final examination piece in Berlin, the Symphonisches Orchesterstück mit Suite, was premiered in 1929 by Volkmar Andreae and the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich. Years of travel with a two-year sojourn in Paris, where he studied piano with Ernst Lévi, educational journeys through Italy and Greece and another stay in Berlin were all formative influences during the late 1920s and the 1930s. During World War II Brunner was a leading member of the Gotthard-Bund, a non-party, anti-fascist movement. From 1949 to 1960 he was head of the section “Politik und Aktuelles” (Politics and News) of Radio Zurich. In 1992 he died at his home in Thalwil, where he lived as a freelance composer. He bequeathed his musical works to the Zentralbibliothek Zurich. As composer and arranger Brunner especially promoted the revival of Protestant church music. Above all his sacred music enjoys continued success. For instance Passionsgeschichte nach dem Evangelisten Markus (Passion according to the Evangelist Mark), which was premiered in 1975 in the Kreuzkirche Dresden, can always be heard in Switzerland during Holy Week. The Pfingstbuch (Whitsun Book), composed in 1936-37, is the oldest of his four organ works. This is an arrangement in five sections of the chorale “Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist“, based on baroque models. After a preamble based on chorale fragments, the chorale itself is presented, after which we have a partita and a passacaglia; at the end we hear the chorale once more. Brunner’s music for organ has a strictly linear structure, the harmony is subordinated; the first principle is transparency. Willy Burkhard is, together with Paul Müller-Zürich and Adolf Brunner, one of the most important Swiss composers, who made outstanding contributions to the revival of sacred music. Burkhard was born on April 17th 1900 in Berne. After completing his training as a teacher at the Evangelische Seminar Muristalden near Berne he studied organ and harmony with the organist of the Berne Minster, Ernst Graf; he continued his studies with Siegfrid Karg-Elert and Robert Teichmüller in Leipzig, with Walter Courvoisier in Munich and with Max d’Ollone in Paris. In 1928 he was appointed as a teacher of music theory at the Berne Conservatory; in addition he conducted several choirs and small orchestras. After long stays in sanatoriums in Davos and Leysin due to lung disease, Burkhard moved to Zurich in 1942, where he worked as a teacher of music theory at the Conservatory until his early death in 1955. His pupils included Klaus Huber, Rudolf Kelterborn, Ernst Pfiffner and Armin Schibler. The Sonatine op. 52 is not a sacred work, but a masterly concert piece in three movements. The pianist and organist Hans Balmer inspired the composer in 1938 to create an organ piece which was “more chamber music” than “thundering”. Burkhard initially thought of a trio sonata, as this was the “most transparent and in its way the purest organ style”. After further discussions with the client a plan was conceived: it should no longer be a “very strict, polyphonic sonata”, but a loosely structured “sonatina, in which, however, the trio style did have an important part to play”. The second movement has the form of a trio; the first is a Toccata, which owes much to its baroque models, while the third movement, Tema con Variazioni e Fughetta, offers variations on a serene theme. Page revised 30.06.03 |
