Ferdinand Rebay: Chamber Music with Guitar Vol. 1

Description

Editorial Note
This project began in 2016 with the acquisition of a number of unpublished chamber works by Ferdinand Rebay from the archive of Heiligenkreuz Abbey (Austria). At the time, much of this repertoire was rarely performed, and some works had never been recorded.
The present three-volume release brings together recordings made over several years with a group of wind players at the Zurich University of the Arts, presenting a substantial body of Rebay’s chamber music for guitar and winds. Each volume has been conceived as a programme with its own character: the first centred on large-scale works, the second on duo and trio writing, and the third on more lyrical and colouristic combinations.

Ferdinand Rebay – Chamber Music Works
This recording by Francesco Braggio and collaborators celebrates the chamber music of Ferdinand Rebay (1880–1953), presenting a repertoire that remains largely unexplored by guitarists and their audiences alike. Ranging from large-scale sonatas to finely crafted miniatures, the selection offers a significant cross-section of Rebay’s guitar output—a non-guitarist composer who became enamored with the instrument in 1924 and continued to write for it until the end of his life.
Before discussing the music itself, however, a brief contextual excursion is necessary to understand his significance as a composer for the guitar. Rebay’s guitar works belong to a Viennese chapter of the so-called “20th-century Guitar Renaissance,” a global movement spearheaded by the Spanish School—Francisco Tárrega, his disciple Miguel Llobet, and later, Andrés Segovia. It was this renewed interest that broadened the instrument’s reach, which at the end of the 19th century was more or less confined to domestic and private settings (such as the German guitar clubs) rather than concert halls and conservatories. However, in contrast to the focus on the solo guitar seen in Llobet and Segovia, a phenomenon occurred in Vienna that was not observed in other European centers: an explosion of chamber music works.
This was no accidental development. The Viennese chamber tradition had its roots in the Biedermeier period (ca. 1815–48), when a profusion of works—mostly intended for the amateur public—was published, fostering the practice of chamber music. In the early 20th century, this repertoire was being revived in German-speaking countries by key figures such as the German Heinrich Albert, a frequent visitor to Vienna. Yet perhaps the most important, and often overlooked, milestone for the guitar in the early decades of the century was the establishment of the first professional curriculum in a major European conservatory: the Vienna Academy (formerly the Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music). This curriculum, established by Jakob Ortner in 1923, enabled guitarists—notably those from German-speaking regions—to pursue professional training and a diploma for the first time. From Ortner’s class emerged some of the most influential Austrian guitarists of the 20th century, such as Luise Walker and Karl Scheit, as well as Rebay’s niece, Gerta Hammerschmid.
It was within this context that Ferdinand Rebay emerged as a composer for the guitar. A musician of solid pedigree and regarded as one of the finest students of Robert Fuchs—Brahms’s own protégé—at the Conservatory, Rebay was hired as a piano professor at the Vienna Academy in the early 1920s. It was there that he met Ortner and his guitar class, establishing a profound connection with the instrument, its repertoire, and its performers. The Viennese chamber music tradition and the harmonic possibilities of the guitar became the guiding forces of his production, as he himself noted in an article written for the Austrian Guitar Quarterly in 1926. In February 1925, only a few months after his initial experiences with the guitar, Rebay completed what would be his first major chamber work: the Sonata in E minor for Oboe and Guitar, one of the rare works in the repertoire for this particular instrumentation. Public and critical reaction was enthusiastic, as attested by reports in major Viennese newspapers of the time, which expressed a certain surprise at what the guitar was actually capable of, in contrast to its typical role as a mere accompanying instrument for songs. This sonata was followed by numerous works, passionately embraced by Ortner and his students and, later, by Gerta Hammerschmid, a prominent chamber musician who became the primary dedicatee of Rebay’s output.
Rebay’s chamber works range from duos for two guitars to a rare septet (featured in this recording), demonstrating an incomparable instrumental versatility. His melodic verve, bolstered by years of vocal training and experience as a choral conductor and composer of Lieder, not only shines through the melodic parts but also provides the guitar with complex textures in which it assumes prominent melodic roles, at times independently and at other times accompanied by the partner instruments. The listener will notice that this recording focuses on music that pairs the guitar with wind instruments. While Rebay did not ignore string instruments in his guitar chamber music, he had a documented preference for combining the guitar with winds, as he once wrote that “the blending of the oboe or clarinet with the guitar results in a far more delightful sound than their association with the piano”.
Finally, it is worth noting that, contrary to the superficiality and lightness often found in the guitar’s immediate past repertoire, Rebay embraced a genre and form long revered as the pinnacle of sophistication: the Sonata. Thus, in the more ambitious pieces of this recording, the listener will have the opportunity to hear the guitar within a formal context practically non-existent in the instrument’s Romantic-period repertoire, perfectly balanced with its partners in the distribution of thematic material, in the finest tradition of the Austro-German chamber sonata. Alongside these large-scale works, this recording also includes shorter pieces such as serenades and suites, exploring a wide variety of instrumental combinations. While these may be less formally daring, they reveal a Rebay less constrained by the rigors of sonata form, showcasing an admirable freshness. All in all, this repertoire is perfectly suited to the tradition of Hausmusik—the practice of music-making in the domestic sphere, which was still very much in vogue during Rebay’s time and practiced by him, as evidenced by numerous documents recounting musical gatherings at home involving Rebay, Hammerschmid, and their colleagues from the Academy.

Dr. Luiz Mantovani
State University of Santa Catarina (UDESC)
http://www.luizmantovani.com