Another historic rarity from the vaults of Swiss Radio. This week it’s the music of Othmar Schoeck with a 1948 performance of his violin concerto op. 21 with Stefi Geyer, violin and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra conducted by Volkmar Andreae.
Othmar Schoeck was known mainly for his considerable output of art songs and song cycles, though he also wrote a number of operas, notably his one-act Penthesilea, which was premiered at the Semperoper in Dresden in 1927 and revived at the Lucerne Festival in 1999. He wrote a handful of instrumental compositions, including two string quartets and concertos for violin (for Stefi Geyer, dedicatee also of Béla Bartók’s first concerto), cello and horn.
Around 1918 Schoeck’s music began a stylistic shift. At this time he became involved with the pianist Mary de Senger, who appears to have had a profound influence on his compositional style. The second act of his next opera, Venus (1919–1921), employs interesting polyrhythmic and bitonal effects. As he became acquainted with the work of Alban Berg and Les six in Paris, he began to feel isolated by his stylistic conservatism.[6] By 1922 his former mentor, Busoni, who was now back in Berlin, wrote a letter to Volkmar Andreae, saying: “Schoeck has completely abandoned me. I have not entirely given him up. He lacks (or lacked) certain ingredients, which are not available at the chemists’. Which should however be manufactured in his own laboratory.”
In the summer of 1923 Schoeck visited Arthur Honegger in Paris, and he later participated in the Salzburg ISCM festival. Not long afterwards, his affair with de Senger came to an end. His distress over the breakup, combined with the shock of the new music he had heard in Paris and Salzburg, seems to have led to a new maturity in his compositional style. Two weeks after his affair ended, he composed the song Die Entschwundene (1923), which was “as much a farewell to the tonal world of his previous music as to his departed lover.”
His work with the German poet Hermann Burte on the opera Das Schloss Dürande, for production at the Berlin State Opera, caused great controversy for Schoeck with the Swiss, because of his association with artists of Nazi Germany. The opera was premiered in Berlin on 1 April 1943 in the presence of Schoeck. Schoeck himself did not harbor Nazi sympathies, but the angry Swiss reaction to his actions damaged his reputation and put great strain on Schoeck. He suffered a heart attack in March 1944, but continued to compose.
Stefi Geyer (June 28, 1888 in Budapest – December 11, 1956 in Zürich) was a Hungarian violinist who was considered one of the leading violinists of her generation. Béla Bartók and Othmar Schoeck, who were both in love with her, wrote violin concertos for her. Bartók’s first violin concerto was published only after both he and Geyer had died. Willy Burkhard dedicated his 1943 violin concerto jointly to Geyer and Paul Sacher.
Volkmar Andreae (5 July 1879 – 18 June 1962) was a Swiss conductor and composer. From 1906 to 1949, he led the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich; and from 1914 to 1939, the Conservatory of Zürich. (He was offered the opportunity of succeeding Gustav Mahler as conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in 1911, but he declined.) Later he worked as freelance composer in Vienna and worked internationally as a conductor (especially with the works of Anton Bruckner). He composed opera, symphony and chamber music, piano, violin, and oboe concertos, piano music, as well as choir music and songs. He died in Zürich.
His grandson is the conductor Marc Andreae, who recorded various of his grandfather’s works for the Guild label.
Enjoy and come back next week.
