Richard Flury

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Richard Flury (born March 26, 1896 in Biberist ; † December 23, 1967 ibid) was a Swiss conductor and composer .

Life

education

After the baccalaureate at the secondary school in Solothurn (Switzerland) studied Flury musicology, art history and philosophy at the Universities of Basel , Bern and Geneva . At the local conservatories he also attended the violin classes of Fritz Hirt, Alphonse Brun and Paul Miche. He also took composition lessons from Hans Huber , counterpoint from Ernst Kurth and instrumentation from Joseph Lauber . At the end of his studies he worked with the composer Joseph Marx in Vienna and attended a conducting course from Felix Weingartner in Basel.

Work as a conductor and composer

Flury then worked as a violin teacher, from 1919 to 1937 at the municipal music school and from 1930 to 1961 at the Solothurn Cantonal School. For thirty years he conducted the Solothurn City Orchestra (1919 to 1949) and for a few years the Academic Orchestra (1923 to 1926) in Zurich , the mixed choir “Harmonie” in Bern and the Gerlafingen Orchestra Association. As a guest conductor, he conducted subscription concerts in Bern and Basel and occasionally worked in the radio studios in Zurich and Lugano, where he mostly conducted his own works.

As a composer, Flury was rooted in the neo-romantic tradition and found his personal style in the imaginative harmony and the rhythmic development of his works. In his orchestral works, which are orchestrated in color, there are also impressionistic traits that stretch to the limits of tonality . A larger forum was closed to those who worked in the province for life, but the importance of Richard Flury was recognized by many prominent musicians of his time. Among them Wilhelm Backhaus , Joseph Bovet , Paul Burkhard , Pablo Casals , Alfred Cortot , Émile Jaques-Dalcroze , Gustave Doret , Walter Gieseking , Georg Kulenkampff , Franz Lehár , Hermann Scherchen , Othmar Schoeck , Richard Strauss , Joseph Szigeti and Felix Weingartner , the Conducted Flury's Carnival Symphony in Basel. These, like the forest symphony, were also performed in various music centers in Europe.

In 1964 R. Flury was awarded the Solothurn Art Prize. His son is Urs Joseph Flury .

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Compositions

His 80-page list of compositions includes works of all musical genres, of which only a few are mentioned here:

  • Stage works: 4 operas (A Florentine Tragedy, The Bright Night, Casanova e l'Albertolli) , 2 ballets, incidental music, mystery play, 5 festivals;
  • Choral works: 8 masses (Mass d, Te Deum) , 4 cantatas, choral songs;
  • Orchestral works: 7 symphonies, 2 suites, poème nocturne, 4 overtures;
  • Concert band: suite, 2 overtures, 24 marches;
  • Concerts: 4 violin concerts, 2 piano concerts;
  • Chamber music: including 10 caprices for solo violin, 11 violin sonatas, 3 cello sonatas, 24 preludes and 50 romantic pieces for piano, 2 piano trios, clarinet trio, piano quartet, piano quintet, 2 string trios, 7 string quartets, octet, nonet and 180 solo songs with piano.

Richard Flury expresses himself modestly about his compositional activity in his “Memoirs”: “The greatest pleasure in life lies in work. What does it matter whether my compositional talent is based on imagination or not? I believe in it and enjoy the slightest progress. If I take myself too seriously and overestimate my works, they still disappear into oblivion. But if I am too modest and I am not appreciated enough, time corrects the mistake even without my intervention ... God was always my friend and protector in hours of loneliness and despair, in my happiness and unhappiness. It is my deepest need with my music, no matter how insignificant, to make a small contribution to the glorification of his omnipotence and infinity. "

Literary work

In addition to his musical work, the composer published a biography of the Solothurn peasant writer Joseph Joachim (1945), his own "Memoirs" (1950) and the written version of his lecture to the Solothurn Pottery Society from 1944, "My Confessions to Musical Romanticism" (1953).

estate

He has given his extensive musical work to the Solothurn Central Library ; the first catalog raisonné, as of 1994, was published there. His son, the musician and composer Urs Joseph Flury, opened the Richard Flury Foundation in 1996 on the 100th birthday of Richard Flury. It has set itself the task of making the works of Flury and his composer friends more accessible to the public again. Recordings of many of Richard Flury's works are available on CD from specialist retailers or can be obtained from the Richard Flury Foundation.

literature

  • Christoph Balmer: Richard Flury. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . January 27, 2005 , accessed January 21, 2020 .
  • Memoirs, by Richard Flury. Habegger printing house, Derendingen AG 1950
  • Music in the past and present. Bärenreiter-Verlag
  • Verena Naegele: Richard Flury . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 1, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 609 f.
  • Jürg Schläpfer: Richard Flury (1896-1967). Catalog raisonné. Solothurn Central Library, Solothurn 1994. (Publications of the Solothurn Central Library; 21)
  • Chris Walton: Richard Flury, the life and music of a Swiss Romantic . Toccata Press, London 2017 (appendix pp. 239–301: Catalog of works of Richard Flury; with CD, containing 27 pieces of music by the composer).
  • Chris Walton: Richard Flury (1896-1967). A Swiss romantic . Solothurn Central Library, Solothurn 2017, ISBN 978-3-9524247-2-8 (Publications of the Solothurn Central Library. Small series, 5)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Entry at kulturfoerderung.ch