I have in my collection a transfer from 78s of the Symphony No.1 in A minor, Op.4 (1894) by Joseph Liebeskind (1866-1916). While searching for information about the performers I came across this link...
http://www.charm.kcl.ac.uk/discography/search/search_advanced?operatorSel_0=and¶meterSel_0=composer¶meterKey_0=compo_017269¶meterKeyTxt_0=Liebeskind,%20Joseph%20(1866-1916) (http://www.charm.kcl.ac.uk/discography/search/search_advanced?operatorSel_0=and¶meterSel_0=composer¶meterKey_0=compo_017269¶meterKeyTxt_0=Liebeskind,%20Joseph%20(1866-1916))
...which gives details of a recording of the symphony made by the (a?) Swiss Radio Orchestra under a conductor surnamed Haug.
Further researches suggest that this might be the Swiss Hans Haug (1900-1967) and that the orchestra may have once been based in Lausanne before it was absorbed into the Suisse Romande Orchestra in Geneva. Can anyone help me with any further information, please?
I have subsequently found this, so I think I'm on the right track:
Hans Haug (1900–1967) was born in Basel Switzerland on July 27, 1900. Throughout his career, along with composing, he was quite active as a conductor, teacher, and musical director. Appearing as guest conductor all over Europe, he also held several conducting positions in his native Switzerland, including the Basel Municipal Theatre (1928-1934), the Interlaken Kursaal, and for Swiss Radio in Lausanne (1935-8) and Zurich (1938-43). (Emphasis added.)
http://www.goldengraphics.ca/fowler/nocturne_e.htm (http://www.goldengraphics.ca/fowler/nocturne_e.htm)l
Actually, it seems that this was probably the orchestra involved:
The Swiss Radio Orchestra (named the 'Beromünster Orchestra') was founded jointly by the three studios of Zurich, Berne and Basle. The old radio transmission tower was located in Beromünster, hence the orchestra's name, though the orchestra itself was usually stationed in Zurich. Its conductor in the 1930s was Hans Haug. In 1944, it was reduced to 38 musicians, and Hermann Scherchen was appointed its conductor. In the summer of 1950, after a period of many difficulties, the contract with Scherchen was not renewed. Paul Burkhard was his successor until 1957, when the orchestra was increased to 60 members. Burkhard was then succeeded by Erich Schmid, who remained until 1971. The orchestra no longer exists.
http://www.guildmusic.com/shop/wbc.php?tpl=produktdetail.html&pid=10022&rid=552&recno=42 (http://www.guildmusic.com/shop/wbc.php?tpl=produktdetail.html&pid=10022&rid=552&recno=42)
I can't be of any assistance in answering your original question, Alan, but since you seem to have unearthed all the information anyway, I don't feel too embarrassed to post a reply indicating that I'd be interested to know how you would describe the style of Liebeskind's Symphony -- I admit to not having encountered his name previously. The sole original work of his at IMSLP (where he is spelled Josef) is the op 2 String Quartet but, not surprisingly, it's only in parts rather than score; trying to make sense of the piece by looking at all the parts simultaneously would push my score-reading skills way beyond their limits, I'm afraid!
The style is Leipzig-school, i.e. very conservative for its date (1894). He was apparently a pupil of Friedrich Hermann (1828-1907), Reinecke and Jadassohn:
http://www.ourtext.co.uk/acatalog/Merton%20Composers-123.pdf (http://www.ourtext.co.uk/acatalog/Merton%20Composers-123.pdf)
Thanks, Alan, that's most helpful. If he learned his lessons well from Reinecke and Jadassohn, he should be worth hearing.
You can judge for yourself, Lionel, as I've now uploaded the Symphony.
Thanks very much for that upload, Mark -- I thought the sound quality amazing good, considering the provenance. As Alan remarked, the symphony is very conservative in idiom; the ghost of Schumann is stalking through most of it and although I don't think that it will prove particularly memorable, it's certainly attractive and well-crafted. Also, I thought the Beromünster Orchestra sounded a good band and Herr Haug a competent conductor.
Again, compliments on the quality of the transfer!
This recording is mentioned in WERM Vol. 1 - issued by Swiss HMV on five 78s FKX 501 - 505.
I had always though this series was a myth, having never come across any!
Haug was himself a prolific composer, according to the Schweizer Musiker-Lexikon (publ. 1964).
Grove adds, tantalisingly "Avoiding contrapuntal and tonal complication, his music was designedly popular in appeal".
There were some Lps made in the 1950s. Anyone have any of these?
There is very little information on the composer, who was primarily a musicologist.
He was born in Leipzig April 22, 1866 and died in Leipzig on August 10, 1916. He has co-authored the thematic catalog of the works of Christpoh of Alfred Wotquenne Willibald Gluck (1904)
He studied at the Leipzig Conservatory with Reinecke, Hermann, and Jadassohn Sitt. He directed the publication of a large number of works by Gluck, Mozart and Dittersdorf. It brought together a vast library rich in documents Gluck, several manuscripts.
Works
Lobe den Herrn, motet for chorus, Op 1
String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, Op 2 (1888)
Trio for piano, violin and cello in D minor, op 3 (1893)
Symphony No. 1 in A minor, op 4 (1894)
Zwei Fugen für die Orgel, Op 6 (1895)
String Quartet No. 2 in C major, Op 7 (1896)
I have not found Opus 5. On the other hand, if there is a Symphony No. 1, I guess there is also a symphony 2?
Liebeskind, Josef. Op.5. Fünf Lieder f. gem. Chor. Published by Brockhaus in 1896. (Das versunkene Kloster: ,,Ein Kloster ist versunken". ; Die Sperlinge: ,,Altes Haus mit deinen Löchern". ; II. Lied: ,,Auf den grünen Auen". ; Einkehr: ,,Bei einem Wirthe wundermild". ; Wanderers Nachtlied: ,,Der du von dem Himmel bist").
As to a 2nd symphony? Not necessarily, and even if so, it may not have been published or have been given an op.#. Also, what's with Op.6 (1895)? It was published by Gebruder Reinecke in 1893. I find it remarkable it was published before it was even composed!
There are also a few songs w/o opus listed in HMB-before-1900 (e.g. Liebesscherz (pseud. Lilian Nordica?) (G Reinecke pub., 1894), Plaisir d' Amour 'ne dure qu'un moment (Max Brockhaus pub., 1895) and also:
Opp.8-11 are all sets of lieder (Op.8 3 Lieder for 4-part men's chorus pub.1897, Op.9 6 songs for voice and piano pub.1898, Op.10 2 Trinklieder for men's chorus, published 1897). Op.11 is for women's chorus.
Op.12 returns to orchestra (a Festmarsch, pub.1898 by Gebrüder Reinecke. Swiss National Library has this).
Op.13 is "Aus frohen Tagen : 6 vierhändige Klavierstücke".
Helveticat also lists
"Der Oberhof / Romantische Oper in 4 Akten, nach der gleichnamigen Erzählung Karl Immermanns von F. Brasch und J. Baltz ; Musik von Josef Liebeskind ; Als Manuscript gedruckt " (libretto only) in addition to most, anyway, of the works listed opp.1-13 and w/o op. here...
For some reason, I have nothing by this composer. I've looked in the old archive in both the Swiss and German collections and I've done a UC site search, and I find nothing other than this thread. Is the symphony still available somewhere?
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbFA6zmf04k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbFA6zmf04k)
jerry
I thought I remembered his first symphony being uploaded here, awhile back, actually...
Maybe his surname was misspelled in the post? Or something? Or the post deleted? It doesn't show up in any search I try either, offhand anyway...
Mark, from the post above in this thread, you uploaded this. Is it still available? Can you tell me where?
"He has co-authored the thematic catalog of the works of Christpoh of Alfred Wotquenne Willibald Gluck"
I think that was supposed to be , he co-authored the thematic catalog of the works of Christoph Willibald Gluck with Alfred Wotquenne (y'know, who's now better known for his work on CPE Bach's music- or maybe not anymore known at all... ah well :( )
Amphissa: Yes, I originally uploaded the Liebeskind Symphony a few years ago. Last year MediaFire "accidentally" wiped all my music files from their server. There were far too many to replace, so I deleted all my affected download posts at UC. I'll look out the Liebeskind Symphony and re-upload it today. Look out for the post.
The Liebeskind Symphony recording is now available from the Downloads board here (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,5549.0.html).
Hi everybody - and greetings from the city which is just shown on an old postcard of that YouTube Liebeskind upload :-) I crossed this same bridge this very morning...
I once had acetates of that broadcast, and they became unplayble. They were given to me by one of the founders of our Swiss Copyright Society SUISA - and I am so happy that someone uploaded this again. Will try to reserach in the archives over here whether there is a Symphony Nr. 2
Thanks very much, Mark. I'm not sure how I missed this guy the first time around, so I appreciate the second chance.
Thanks for re-uploading this, Mark. It's a bit of a curiosity - written in the style of a generation earlier, and by a rarely heard composer/musicologist but, to my ears, quite mundane - what Victor Borge called "bread & butter".
I wonder what his arrangements/reductions are like. I think he was a specialist in the music of Gluck.....
It's not a great piece, is it? A historical curiosity only, perhaps.
Although I uploaded it, I must say that I didn't do so in a spirit of advocacy! Personally, I find it as dull as ditch water.
So, now I'm confused. Are we permitted to express negative opinions about music on UC or not?
Where's the confusion? Negative comments welcome!
Well, the "Sung composers" thread was terminated because of negative opinions. I'm just trying to get a sense of where the line is regarding expression of negative opinions about composers or their music.
(1) there's always been a preference here for opinions, positive or negative, to be backed up with something rather than remaining solely opinions.
(2) I shouldn't - because I can't - speak to why that thread was suspended, but would guess that another reason was the repeated violations of our restricted forum guidelines. This mattered less when the topic began, for the simple, palimpsest/time-travel-related reason that those guidelines had yet to be put in place at that time.
When the topic was resumed recently, however, there was a (the usual such) temptation to continue the discussion in the topic according to the rules that had prevailed earlier in the topic- a temptation which should have been resisted, because the forum's prevailing rules had changed.
Thanks, Eric.
Amphissa: There is absolutely no restriction on expressing positive or negative views about music. That's the lifeblood of UC, and personally I'm not sparing in my criticism when I feel so moved. I decided to close the Sung Composers You Just Don't Get thread because, after 18 pages, it had run out of steam. Because a thread, once started, tends to develop a format of its own, sometimes it's best to close it down if the format become sterile, that's all. It's not a big deal. Most posts were some variation on "I like" or "I don't like", which in itself tells the rest of us nothing about the music. What informs readers here is, as Eric says, why someone likes or doesn't like.
Now, back to Liebeskind, please.
I'd like to hear those string quartets, one of which is @ IMSLP. Any chamber group willing to have a look (with the risk that no.1 might well be as dull as Mark finds the symphony, but - nothing ventured, nothing gained...) ? (No.2 Op.7 seems to be hard to trace, though.)
Re the opus no. list above, there's an op.15 "Serenade no.3" in A minor, too (under Josef Liebeskind, not Joseph, on Worldcat.)
Liebeskind was the subject of an article in the Jan. 7 1915 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, incidentally: "Josef Liebeskind und seine Musikbibliothek", by Dr. Max Unger (see Archive.org (https://archive.org/stream/NeueZeitschriftFrMusik1915Jg082/Nzfm1915Jg082#page/n5/mode/2up).)
Tangential to the thread (though not the subjectline), though maybe not after all: it contains at least a partial worklist of his music, too before going into a description of his library. (I've seen descriptions of the (or selected, when there were multiple, because of travel, exile, etc.) personal music libraries of some better-known modern composers and found them very interesting personally (especially when they contained music the composers didn't, allegedly, care for*.) No such revelation here, but still looks worth a quick read...)
*Listing of one of Hindemith's libraries comes immediately to mind.
Hello, I find this blog/thread by chance. I realize this is an old post, and must confess that I did not read all of them. Yet unless that Joseph Liebeskind was an unlikely homonymous, he was my great-grandfather. I am the depository of his works. Namely, I have a set of Bakelite 78rpm plates which is supposed to be exhaustive, and of his music sheets. Although I would need to dig into our archives, I am happy to contribute.
Thank you very much for sharing the mp3 of your 78rpm (http://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,5549.msg58281.html#msg58281). As I said I should have the comprehensive set of his 78rpm recordings, but could not yet listen to them since I do not have the necessary equipment. Once I convert them all I will share them too.
Thanks, that's very interesting. Do keep in touch with us.
I must have been in a negative mood last time I listened to the Symphony - this time round I found I rather liked its energy and breezy melodiousness. It'd be great if the old recording could be spruced up a bit - or a new performance recorded.
Dear Mr. Liebeskind
I have the equipment to transfer 78rpm into music files - and to improve/filter them accordingly. I have a long-time experience in this field.
If you want to make my acquaintance, let me know. I live in Zurich.
Ah! yes! thank you! I am more than happy to take your offer. I live near Yverdon and will gladly visit Zurich. Once we have done so I am equally happy to share the files with this blog.
Marvellous! Thanks to both of you.