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This weekend, a festival dedicated to the music of Swiss-German composer Franz Curti (1854-1898) is taking place in Rapperswil Switzerland, today with a performance of his dramatic cantata from 1882, Die Gletscherjungfrau (The Glacier Maiden).

Apparently there are plans to stage his later opera Reinhard von Ufenau in the place where it is set, on the island of Ufenau in Lake Zürich.

A double CD with excerpts recorded in Geneva in 2005 is available to order from the Curti festival website.
Here is his Wikipedia entry. It is interesting to note that he studied medicine and worked as a dentist in Dresden. While most of his works were published and his opera Lili-Tsee was apparently performed at the Metropolitan Opera, Curti was denied membership of the Dresden "Tonkünstlerverein": 'We do not accept dentists.'

Donne, Women in Music, presents a fundraising concert in aid of UNICEF UKRAINE APPEAL with music by long-lost composer Leokadiya Kashperova on her 150th birthday in London on 16th May.

A marvellous, committed performance of the impressive and moving String Quintet in A minor op. 7 by Johanna Müller-Hermann.

Just found out that Deutschlandfunk DLF Kultur is broadcasting a live performance of Paderewski's only opera Manru tonight, 19 March, from 19.30 CET to 23.00.

L'Association Elles - women composers has announced their first release on a new label, La boîte à pépites, which is to be devoted to music by women composers. It is a set of 3 CDs with piano, chamber and orchestral music by Charlotte Sohy. International release on 22 April.

Here's the original French wording:

LANCEMENT DU LABEL LA BOÎTE À PÉPITES -
"RECORDING WOMEN COMPOSERS"

Depuis 2020, l'Association Elles - women composers se donne pour mission de redonner vie à des oeuvres inconnues ou - au mieux - méconnues de compositrices.

La version discographique de La Boîte à Pépites poursuit cette même mission tout en se donnant un nouvel objectif, éditer des monographies : la compositrice est placée au centre du projet, et nous, interprètes, nous mettons collectivement au service de sa musique.

Notre premier opus, consacré à Charlotte Sohy, permettra de découvrir, dans un triple coffret, une grande partie de son oeuvre jusque-là inédite au disque.

This interesting programme will be performed by Marie Vermeulin at Palazzetto Bru Zane on 8 March and become available on Bru Zane Replay from 29 March:

Virginie Morel
Huit études mélodiques
No 1. [Introduction] – No 2. La calma – No 3. La disperata – No 4. La berceuse No 5. L'incertezza – No 6. Barcarole – No 7. Romanza – 8. Le papillon
Charlotte Sohy
Sonate
I. Animé – II. Lent – III. Très vif
Mel Bonis
Femmes de légende
Phœbé, op. 30 – Viviane, op. 80 – Omphale, op. 86 – Salomé, op. 101/1 Desdémona, op. 101 – Mélisande, op. 109 – Ophélie, op. 165/1

A link to a blog entry on the 'images musicales' website makes me wonder what this 'Symphonie descriptive pour Orchestre' by the French pianist and composer Henri Kowalski sounded like and whether it could be resurrected and enjoyed in its own right without the experience of the 'Maréorama'. The piano reduction of three of the four movements is at IMSLP.
The composer's English wikipedia entry is a stub, but the one in French is quite detailed.

Emilio Lehmberg 1905-1959: "Sinfonía para la festividad de Santa Cecilia". I would be happy to have a CD of this colourful, attractive symphony from 1959 with nary a whiff of the 20th century about it, but I have not been able to find a source. There doesn't seem to be a website for the label, Verso, either.

Downloads are available from Presto, and what is probably a rip is on Youtube. The other works on the CD are on Youtube as well.

A comprehensive text about the composer can be found on a website 'The History of the Symphony' by Francesc Serracanta I Giravent  here. A machine translation reads as follows:

Emilio Lehmberg (1905-1959) was born in Malaga on 9 November 1905. The history of his German surname is so curious that it deserves a few paragraphs. It began on 16 December 1900 on the German war frigate Gneisenau anchored off the port of Malaga.

The Gneisenau was a 2843-ton warship with a crew of 470 and 14 guns. Waiting to pick up the German ambassador on a mission to Morocco, it was anchored off the port of Malaga on 15 December. A strong easterly gale arose in the early hours of the 16th, warning the ship to enter port.
But the captain did not heed the warning. The strong gale broke the frigate's anchors, leaving it at the mercy of the waves and the hurricane-force wind. The crew was ordered to be evacuated, but the rescue boats sank into the sea or crashed against the rocks on the coast.
The ship was dragged towards the harbour jetty. Losing all control, it ended up being thrown over the breakwater and began to sink. The people of Malaga came to the aid of the shipwrecked. The victims were 41 members of the ship's crew, including its commander and a dozen people from Malaga who had helped them.

The survivors were taken in by the people of Malaga, who offered them their own homes until they were repatriated by a new German ship. But some of the sailors were allowed to stay for some time in Malaga. Among them was the 21-year-old sailor Otto Lehmberg, who had been taken in by the Ruiz Rodríguez family, a wealthy couple who lived in a mansion in Calle del Cristo de la Esperanza.
The family's daughter, then aged 19, Conchita Ruíz, fell in love with the German sailor and they were soon married in the Malaga capital. From this marriage the future composer Emilio Lehmberg Ruíz was born in 1905.
Given the curious reason for his German surname, Lehmberg studied in his hometown and soon showed an interest and talent for music.  He studied music theory, piano and violin with local musicians. He continued his studies at the National Conservatory in Madrid. He studied composition with Conrado del Campo. He also studied piano with Leopoldo Querol.
After finishing his studies around 1930, he began to earn his living as a violinist as well as writing his first compositions. He worked in numerous revue and zarzuela orchestras. He composed several works for piano, among them the suites "Málaga" and "Granada". The latter was orchestrated in 1931. Works in the Andalusian nationalist style following in the footsteps of Falla.
"Impresiones del atardecer" is a symphonic poem composed in 1931 for maestro José Lassalle, the conductor of the Madrid orchestra that bore his name and in which Lehmberg collaborated as first viola.
At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936 he was in Madrid, joining the Republican Guard Band, stationed at the Palacio de Oriente. When the war ended, he married Carmen González Feijóo in 1942, a young piano student from Vigo whom he had met during his lessons with Leopoldo Querol.
In order to support his family during the difficult post-war period, he had to devote himself to commercial composition, in the field of the musical revue, a lighter genre that had replaced the zarzuela.
The last work of a symphonic nature before this stage of his life is the "Suite andaluza", a suite of Andalusian dances composed in 1942, at a time of exalted nationalism. The influence of Manuel de Falla is very noticeable. For Spanish music, Andalusian was identified with Spanish, so that composing music of a Spanish nationalist character meant composing music based on Andalusian folklore. This was also true of exiled composers such as Manuel de Falla himself. Andalusia was assimilated into the artistic concept of Spain.

He settled in Madrid, where he remained until his death, and in 1944 his only daughter Carmen Lehmberg was born, who would devote herself to dance. Dedicated to stage music for material needs, during the 1950s his greatest successes came in the world of the revue, a sub-genre derived from the zarzuela, motivated by purely commercial reasons to attract an unrefined public who loved light music with more or less racy stage situations, as much as the demure censorship of the time allowed.
The revue that gave him most success was "Lo verás y lo cantarás" composed in 1954, with lyrics written by the popular comedian Tony Leblanc. The number that was most successful was "Cántame un pasodoble español", a number of great expression of the reigning nationalism. The last three years of his life were traumatic due to the development of a mental illness.
The "Sinfonía para la festividad de Santa Cecilia" was completed in 1959, at the end of his life. We do not know what prompted him to write it, nor the origin and relationship to its title. It was premiered posthumously on 17 January 1962, at a tribute event organised by Malaga Town Hall. It was performed by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Málaga conducted by Pedro Gutiérrez Lapuente.
The first movement, andante, allegro, begins with a broad, slow introduction, with a lyrical theme. It employs remarkable contrapuntal forms. The influence of Brahms' music is quite clear. The first theme of the allegro written in sonata form is rhythmic in character. It has a short motif whose rhythm reminds us of Mozart. It soon gives way to a second theme of a lyrical character, which leads to an extensive development. The main theme begins the recapitulation, where the Mozartian motif is heard again. A conclusive coda closes the movement.

The second movement, andante, is written in lied form, presenting an uncharacteristic theme. It develops in keeping with the Germanic-influenced style we have seen in the previous movement.
The third movement, allegro, scherzo, uses a Brahmsian-influenced rhythmic theme with characteristic horn calls. After a brief pause it presents a second theme also in Germanic style, which forms the trio. Finally the first part of the movement is repeated.
The fourth movement, allegro, quasi presto, is the only movement in which it incorporates Andalusian elements, as can be seen in its main theme, with a rhythmic motif that is repeated throughout the movement in a rondo-like form. It alternates with melodic elements of a lyrical character.
A symphony in a romantic style, out of its time, written at the end of his life as if it were a tribute to Brahms, after he had abandoned writing symphonic music for years. We do not know what led him to this composition, nor why he dedicated it to the patron saint of music, during years of psychological instability.
His depressive mental illness worsened, leading to his death on 24 August 1959. Nowadays, a well-known street in Malaga bears his name, but passers-by are not aware of his symphonic work. The oft-mentioned conductor José Luis Temes has recorded some of his compositions.

I wonder what people here at UC make of this, Symphony 1 "Remembrance" by Albert Hurwit. Available on MSR Classic and all four movements also on Youtube.

There is also a presentation of the full work by conductor Michael Lankester, A Doctor's Symphony, and a documentary about the composer and how this work came about. Or this longer presentation by the composer 'From Medicine to Music'.

Researchers here may be interested in the concert database of the Hungarian Institute of Musicology. It appears to be in Hungarian only, though.

During lockdown in Austria, Pforte Feldkirch have created a new production that will be shown as a live stream:

Pantomime director Lionel Ménard and Pforte director Klaus Christa have developed twelve short scenes that are interwoven and culminate in a performance by the Farrenc Piano Quintet. The musicians of the Ensemble Farrenc with Mayumi Kanagawa (violin), Klaus Christa (viola), Mathias Johansen (violoncello), Dominik Wagner (double bass) and Katya Apekisheva (piano) act both making music and performing on stage. The play is about a caretaker of an apartment building in Vienna's Nussdorferstraße 54, the birthplace of Franz Schubert, who regrets that the residents of his house are no longer in contact with each other and are only busy with their mobile phones. He sets himself the goal of freeing the residents from their loneliness and bringing them back together.

This will be available as a free live stream on Saturday 11 December at 5 pm CET on the Pforte website. More information, in German, here

Two orchestral works by María de Pablos (Segovia 1904- Madrid 1990) were released last year in world premiere recordings from 2019 on the Spanish Cezanne Producciones label, the symphonic poem 'Castilla' from 1927 and 'Dos apuntes musicales españoles' from 1930.
She studied at the Madrid Conservatoire from the age of ten, her teacher was Conrado del Campo. In 1928 she was the first woman to win a place at the Academia Española de Bellas Artes de Roma in a competitive examination. Her scholarship required her to study abroad for some time and in 1930 she went to Paris to study with Paul Dukas and Nadia Boulanger. She did not return to Rome, however, nor did she stay in Paris, but abandoned her scholarship. Her catalogue of works is quite short and she appears to have suffered many hardships in the macho society prevalent in Spain at the time. Why she did not finish her scholarship in Rome is not known nor is it clear today why she was admitted to the Sanatorio Esquerdo de Carabanchel in the 1940s and remained there as a chronically ill patient until her death in 1990.

Here is the catalogue of known works:

Ave Verum (1927), Castilla (1927), Sonata Romántica (1929), Dos apuntes musicales españoles (1929-30), Siete canciones (1929-30) and La cabrerilla (1934).
The Cezanne CD has a rather short playing time of 44', but the two works on it are beautiful. They are also here (Castilla) and here (Dos apuntes I) and here (Dos apuntes II).
 

The comedian, brilliant comic poet, actor and musical entertainer Heinz Erhardt (Riga 1909 – Hamburg 1979) is still a household in the German speaking countries today, fondly remembered for his film performances above all, although there was certainly more to him than that. He studied piano and composition in Leipzig and originally wanted to become a concert pianist. It was only long after his death that his children found music that he had composed in the attic. Japanese pianist Chie Ishii recorded 24 short romantic piano pieces for the musiktotal records label, among them 'Walzer eines Wahnsinnigen' (Waltz of a Madman) See here for the music in pdf format and here for Ms Ishii's performance of the piece. Downloads are available from her bandcamp site.

Gaston Borch, born to a Norwegian father and a French mother, was a prolific composer of photoplay music for silent films, but according to biographical information gathered on the website of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra he also wrote two symphonies, four symphonic poems and a piano concerto. I have not been able to find out if any of these large-scale works have survived. Some of his many shorter compositions are available, for example photoplay music, on CDs by the Mont Alto Orchestra. There is also an interesting arrangement of The Shepherd (1927) for bassoon and harp by Robert Rønnes.

Cezanne Producciones, the label that released a CD with the two symphonies by Francisco Calés discussed here recently, has also issued a CD with the opera in one act 'Becqueriana' from 1915 by the Spanish composer María Rodrigo (1888-1967), plus 'Rimas infantiles' and 'La copla intrusa'. Most of the composer's works were sadly lost when she fled Madrid in 1939. It was a hundred years after the second of only two performances of 'Becqueriana' that the opera was finally performed again and recorded by conductor José Luis Temes in 2016, who had revised the score of this first opera by a female composer in Spain. The CD is well worth getting, but for those who want to sample it first, it is also available here.

According to the French Wikipedia entry on her, the French composer Hedwige Chrétien wrote some 250 works in various forms and genres, but it would appear that only her beautiful wind quintet in two movements has ever been recorded. A performance on Youtube is also available, played by the Quintette Allegria: 1st movement and second movement.

3 August, 6.30 CET live from the Schönberg Center, Vienna and on Youtube and Facebook with songs by Stöhr, Korngold, Barber etc., also Fritz Kreisler: Viennese Rhapsodic Fantasietta: details and links.

Johanna Rosa Falkinger Soprano
Johannes Fleischmann Violin
Andreas Thaller Piano

Today's post on the forthcoming Toccata Classics Heino Eller piano music CD prompts me to ask if anyone here has ordered directly from Toccata recently. My latest order from mid May never arrived nor has there been a reply to any of the three emails I sent to enquire. 

The 2021 edition of the International Bruckner Festival in Linz will feature a number of concerts with music by students of Bruckner:

Mathilde Kralik von Meyrswalden – Symphony in F minor (1902–03, rev. 1942) and Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra  in D minor (1936–37),

Chamber music by Kralik von Meyrswalden, Cyrill Hynais (1862–1913), Joseph Vockner (1842-1906), Paul Caro (1859-1914) and Franz Marschner (1855-1932).

Programme details here.

Some of this will be broadcast on ORF radio, but as yet there are no details available on their Festspielsender website.

Boito's 'Nerone' will be broadcast live from the Bregenz Festival on Austrian radio Oe1, on 21 July at 7.30 pm CET:

With: Rafael Rojas (Nerone), Lucio Gallo (Simon Mago), Brett Polegato (Fanuèl), Svetlana Aksenova (Asteria), Alessandra Volpe (Rubria), Miklós Sebestyèn (Tigellino), Taylan Reinhard (Gobrias), Ilya Kutyukhin (Dositèo) und Katrin Wundsam (Cerinto und Pèrside)
Prager Philharmonischer Chor; Wiener Symphoniker; Dirigent: Dirk Kaftan
(Live-Übertragung der Eröffnungspremiere der "Bregenzer Festspiele 2021" aus dem Festspielhaus)