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Contents:
DDD 78.29 Recorded: Potton Hall, Suffolk, England 20-25 November 2004 Johann Karl Eschmann was born in Winterthur on 12 April 1826. His father Heinrich (1802-1882) was a music teacher there and the bandmaster for the cantonal military music, and until 1880 was engaged as a member of the town’s music college. From early days he introduced his son to music, and it is probably as a result of his initiative that the young Eschmann had his first music lesson in Zurich with the renowned pianist, conductor and music teacher Alexander Müller (1808-1863), a friend of Richard Wagner. From 1845 on Eschmann studied for two years at the Conservatory in Leipzig, which had been founded in 1843 at the instigation of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and which, during the 19th century, developed into the most respected music academy in Germany. At first Mendelssohn himself taught him piano-playing as well as composition, and then from 1846 Ignaz Moscheles took over. After his return to Switzerland in 1847, Eschmann made a name for himself as a music teacher and musician. Initially he settled down in Zurich as a piano and composition teacher, before moving to Winterthur three years later, and worked there many years as well as a music teacher. In between we may assume that he stayed in Kassel for a short while, where he probably met Louis Spohr (1784-1859) – Eschmann dedicated the six songs Aus dem Liederbuch eines Malers (From the Songbook of a painter) (op. 34) to him – who had been working just there as the court bandmaster since 1822. Apart from his work as a teacher, Eschmann acted as a violinist or viola-player in the subscription concerts of the Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zurich (AMG), conducted by Richard Wagner (1813-1883) since 1850, for which additional musicians from Winterthur were engaged. Eschmann probably met the composer, who had fled from Dresden to Zurich in 1849, in person early in the 1850s at the latest – possibly through his previous teacher Alexander Müller -, and was soon able to count himself among Wagner’s closer circle of friends in Zurich. Witness to this amicable relationship is not least one of Wagner’s serenades for solo violin and orchestra dedicated to Eschmann – an arrangement of number five from the five Wesendonck songs from 1857 -, of which the copyist’s copy is kept in the music department of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Theodor Kirchner (1823-1903), the composer and pianist from Neukirchen in Saxony, had also lived in Winterthur since 1845. On the recommendation of Mendelssohn, he had been engaged as an organist at the municipal church. Although both musicians were friends – thus Eschmann dedicated his Fünf Lieder (Five Songs) for soprano and piano (op. 7) to Kirchner, and Kirchner dedicated his Romanzen for piano (op. 22) to Eschmann, and published some of Eschmann’s late piano pieces (op. 64, 74, 76, 77, 79) - , the latter saw himself forced to leave his hometown Winterthur in 1859, as, in his opinion, there was not enough room for two artists working in the same field. He moved to Schaffhausen, where he worked as a piano and singing teacher, founded a mixed choir and conducted the men’s choir from 1862 on. In 1866 Eschmann again moved to and this time finally settled in Zurich as a piano teacher. In the same year he met Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) in Zurich, who repeatedly conducted the subscription concerts between 1865 and 1895. Whilst Wagner arguably had appreciated Eschmann more as a musician, Brahms also took an interest in his compositional creating. It was also Brahms who successfully recommended Eschmann to his publisher Simrock in Berlin. Eschmann died in Zurich on 27 October 1882. Eschmann had increasingly devoted his time to composing since the end of the 1840s. With his first printed opus (Poesieblumen. Vier Romanzen for piano, 1848) and his Zwei Gedichte (1850), published as opus 2, for voice and piano, he already mainly focused on the two points of his entire work, and moreover, paid his contribution to the two genres, which would experience increased attention from the composers in the course of the 19th century, and finally became the central genres in that period. Apart from that, he composed a piece for orchestra (Grosse Concert-Ouverture, 1847), as well as a few works for chamber and choir. The publication of his Oeuvres, amounting to a total of around 90 compositions, by reputable music-publishers in Switzerland and Germany, such as Rieter-Biedermann in Winthertur, Breitkopf und Härtel in Leipig, Luckhardt in Kassel or Simrock in Berlin. This CD offers an almost complete compilation of Eschmann’s song creations between 1850 and 1870. The preferred line-up is mainly a soprano or tenor voice with piano accompaniment. Whilst the vocal line dominates in the earlier songs, the piano part is later given the enhanced status of an equal partner to the voice. Merely in two cases a further instrument joins in - a valve horn in op.10 and a violoncello in op. 11. Usually several songs are put together under one opus number, which was perfectly common in those times. To actually want to interpret the key references, which undoubtedly existed within the individual groups, in such a way as if they were cycles, as say, in the sense of Schubert’s work, would surely be taking it too far. However, the keys do indeed arouse attention in so far as that the songs strikingly often move about in remote areas such as D flat major (op. 7) or E flat minor (op. 49) and even do not shy away from modulations up to D sharp major. Nevertheless, Eschmann’s compositions should be classed as belonging to the rather conservative movement, which was later mainly connected with Brahms. All songs in this selection are varied strophic forms, in which the variations follow the changing contents of the text. Eschmann set some of the songs to poetic work by Joseph von Eichendorff, Emanuel Geibel or Anastasius Grün. The bulk of the texts, however originates from his poet friend from Winterthur August Corrodi (1826-1885), who, since the early 1850s, – encouraged by his pen pal of many years Eichendorff – turned to writing poetry, and was especially well-known for his works for children. Prior to this, Corrodi had occupied himself with painting after his studies at the Kunstakademie in Munich. However, he had been denied a breakthrough as a painter. His pencil portrait of Eschmann, printed in this booklet, however, testifies to his artistic ambitions, to which we owe the most well-known if not the only illustrated portrayal of this significant Swiss composer of the 19th century. Katharina Bruns Page revised 04.03.06 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
