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Tribune correspondent
Published: April 27, 2012
Updated: April 27, 2012 - 12:00 AM
Though a prominent musician in his day, Eduard Franck was virtually erased from history in the 20th century. Fifty years later, his family scoured Europe for his compositions and, once found, regifted them to the world.
The Florida Orchestra will shine a spotlight this week on the long-forgotten 19th-century German composer. For the Masterworks program, "A Musical Feast," pianist James Tocco will perform the U.S. premiere of Franck's "Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13."
Franck was born in Breslau, Prussia, in 1817. He was a contemporary of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Liszt, and he studied with Mendelssohn before venturing out on his own. An accomplished pianist and composer, Franck excelled at teaching. This, plus unhurried attempts to publish, kept him from the public success enjoyed by his peers.
In the 20th century, as Nazis strove to eradicate Jewish culture from German history, Franck's compositions and memory disappeared. Although his family had converted to Christianity, he was still considered Jewish, and thus the Nazis banned his work.
Then in the 1990s, under the most unlikely circumstances, he was rediscovered.
"The only reason his music has been resurrected is because of the indefatigable efforts of his great grandson and great-great grandson (Paul and Andreas Feuchte)," Tocco said. "They first told me about the piano concerto 10 years ago. They had only the originally published piano score but no orchestral score. They asked me if it would be possible to reconstruct the orchestral part, given the fact they didn't have wind or timpani."
Tocco faced a daunting task, which was the equivalent of completing a puzzle with neither a picture to follow nor all of the pieces. While he forged ahead, the Feuchtes retraced Franck's steps in his career, contacting the places where he performed or taught. As a young man, Franck spent three years in Rome and was an elected member of the Santa Lucia Academy. It stood to reason he left something of his behind there. And, indeed, his descendants discovered all of the orchestral parts to the "Piano Concerto No. 1" in the academy's library archives.
"This was a major discovery. On the heels of this, a new publisher in Leipzig, Nick Pfefferkorn, decided to publish the score. He had to reconstruct the score from all of the individual parts. It was a painstaking process. He involved me in the task, and I proofread every version he sent to me. The fact is that now we have a complete and authentic score that you can read and conduct from," Tocco said.
Tocco described the concerto as an "amalgamation of the classical style of Mendelssohn and the incipient romanticism of Chopin." The work incorporates a skillful use of instrumentation, some of which Tocco said he had never seen or heard before in a piano concerto.
"The first movement relies heavily on wind instruments. Winds have to breathe the same way a vocalist does. For this reason, the phrasing of this particular nocturne is very vocal," Tocco said.
In addition to Franck's elusive concerto, the April program also includes Weber's "Oberon," Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream," Lortzing's "Der Waffenschmied," Nicolai's "The Merry Wives of Windsor and Wagner's "Die Meistersinger: Prelude."
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