🇩🇪 Gertrud Schweizer: Sieben kleine Klavierstücke

Born in Mannheim in 1894, the piano teacher and composer Gertrud Schweizer studied under musicians who themselves were pupils of Rheinberger and Liszt. But the greatest influence on her music, which output is considerable but all unpublished, was the composer-pianist Ernst Toch with whom she maintained a close friendship and who taught music in her hometown of Mannheim. Schweizer was murdered, along with most of her siblings, by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1942.

These seven miniatures (plus a bonus!) illustrate the challenges of bringing the work of this talented musician to light. The manuscripts from which the electronic edition I'm reading were transcribed were damaged and somewhat confusing (the "appendix" is an additional piece also identified as № 5 but enclosed in brackets) so no doubt the generous musicologist who prepared this edition had some guesswork to do. And I myself made a number of changes to address what I think must be either errors in the transcription or oversights in the manuscript that would have been ironed out in the publication process, had the composer had the chance. I hope I haven't broken anything, but I am honoured to be able to present these works.

Detail of the barbed wire barrier at Auschwitz by Monica Volpin from Pixabay.
https://pixabay.com/users/monicavolpi...

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00:00 - 1. Scherzando
00:44 - 2. Andante
01:43 - 3. Allegro capriccioso
02:16 - 4. Ruhig (nicht schleppen)
03:43 - 5. Schnell und graziös (aber nicht hastig)
04:17 - 6. Grazioso
04:53 - 7. Energisch und rasch
05:19 - Appendix. Allegretto