Sturzenegger: Compositeurs et interprètes (2005)

While the Swiss Gall (formerly Gallo) label is not a vanity label, some of its projects take on something of a vanity tinge. Sturzenegger: Compositeurs et interprètes focuses on a Swiss family with a longstanding reputation for music-making; how many dads do you know would celebrate the birth of his first son by writing a Ballade for horn and piano? Kurt Sturzenegger did, and it is included here as played by said son and daughter-in-law. It is a bright, mildly Hindemithian work with references to the horn figure from ... Read More

While the Swiss Gall (formerly Gallo) label is not a vanity label, some of its projects take on something of a vanity tinge. Sturzenegger: Compositeurs et interprètes focuses on a Swiss family with a longstanding reputation for music-making; how many dads do you know would celebrate the birth of his first son by writing a Ballade for horn and piano? Kurt Sturzenegger did, and it is included here as played by said son and daughter-in-law. It is a bright, mildly Hindemithian work with references to the horn figure from Richard Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel's "Lüstige Streiche," and that is not all it has in common with Strauss. Given observed standards in European music circa 1976, the conservatism of Kurt Sturzenegger's effort is striking, but nowhere near so as the compositions of the son in question, Christophe. Christophe Sturzenegger's pieces, save the piano piece Le Tombeau de Debussy, are couched in an idiom owing to Beethoven and Schubert and behave as though the 150 years twixt Schumann's death and... Read Less