Romantic Discoveries Recordings

Theodor Kirchner (1823-1903)
From my Sketchbook
John Kersey, piano
RDR CD35

Total time: 66 mins 3 secs

Four Nocturnes, op 28:
1) Ruhig, singend (5’25”) 2) Con sentimento (3’18”) 3) Moderato (3’07”) 4) Molto moderato (4’13”)

Aus meinem Skizzenbuche, op 29:
5) Ungarisch (1’56”) 6) Deutscher Walzer (3’00”) 7) Humoreske (3’26”) 8) Frühlingsgesang (2’21”) 9) Ständchen (3’25”) 10) Jagdstückchen (0’53”)

Album for piano, op 26 (19’29”):
11) Moderato (1’30”) 12) Allegretto scherzando (1’32”) 13) Ruhig (1’23”) 14) Allegretto (1’18”) 15) Moderato (2’17”) 16) Allegretto semplice (1’21”) 17) Vivace (00’59”) 18) Comodo (1’15”) 19) Ziemlich bewegt (1’45”) 20) Nicht zu schnell (1’24”) 21) Allegretto comodo(2’29”) 22) Ziemlich schnell (1’14”)

Four Polonaises, op 43:
12) Maestoso (2’25”) 13) Allegro ma non troppo (3’58”) 14) Lebhaft (4’59”) 15) Moderato (3’07”)

Fürchtegott Theodor Kirchner, a pupil of Mendelssohn at the newly-founded Leipzig Conservatoire, composed over 1000 original works for piano, most of which are sets of miniatures. Kirchner was recommended by Mendelssohn for the post of organist of Winterthur in Switzerland in 1843, and remained there for the next twenty years. The position gave him the opportunity to travel throughout Germany, and there he came into contact with Brahms and the Schumanns (he had first met Robert Schumann aged fourteen), who recognised in him an arch-Romantic and kindred spirit. He appears to have had a brief affair with Clara Schumann in the 1860s.

In 1862, Kirchner became director of the subscription concerts in Zurich, but remained there for only three years before returning to freelance life. He was appointed court pianist at Meiningen in 1872 and became director of the conservatoire in Würzburg the following year. Again, he did not stay long, and in 1876 moved to Leipzig for seven years, before going on to Dresden, where he taught score-reading. The year 1890 was a climactic one for him, for he abandoned his wife and family and went to live in Hamburg, where he was looked after by a former pupil. Four years later he suffered the first of two strokes that left him paralysed, and began to go blind.

“In his character there is no stability” wrote Clara Schumann. Kirchner’s career suffered because of his addiction to gambling and an extravagant lifestyle that was beyond his means, and his musical friends had periodically to bail him out from financial ruin. In 1884 a group including Brahms, Grieg, Gade and von Bülow raised thirty thousand marks to help him pay off his gambling debts.

Many of Kirchner’s original works were written for accomplished women pianists. They demand not merely a sound and sometimes virtuosic technique, but also a poetic imagination befitting the intimate setting of the nineteenth-century salon. His Sketchbook and Album showcase the creation of drama within the miniature in a way that foreshadows Grieg, and also develop the miniature into a larger-scale connected cycle. The Nocturnes and Polonaises (the latter of which also exist in versions for four hands) owe little to Chopin’s models, but rather offer an insight into the way the Germanic school made those forms their own at the height of their popularity. The Nocturnes in particular provide the ground for some novel harmonic effects in their agitated central sections.