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						<b><font size="+1" color="#336699">Conductor Karl Anton Rickenbacher's Search for Little-Known Music of the Great Composers</font></b>
						<p>In early April 2001, Karl Anton Rickenbacher conducted a concert in Spain's famous Mezquita, the Cordoba-based Renaissance cathedral housed within a 10th-century Mosque. </p>
						<p>&quot;This concert truly represents who I am,&quot; the Swiss conductor said during a recent telephone interview from Seattle, where he was making a rare U.S. appearance with the Seattle Symphony. &quot;I conducted the Brahms <i>Requiem</i> -- one of the most Protestant works in existence -- in a Mosque with a Catholic cathedral in the middle!&quot;  </p>
						<p>Actually, the Seattle program, featuring Messiaen's <i>Un Sourire, </i>Debussy's <i>La Mer,</i> and Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Jorge Federico Osorio, was perhaps more representative, with its mix of French and German repertoire, including a bit of Messiaen thrown in.</p>
						<p>Because Rickenbacher rarely works in the U.S., his name is unknown to all but the most dedicated record collector. Some might be aware of his passion for, in his words, &quot;exploring little-known music of the greatest composers.&quot; Others might own the conductor's recordings of works by Olivier Messiaen, a composer he has been drawn to over decades. But few know the full background of this complex and intellectual conductor. </p>
						<p>Karl Anton Rickenbacher studied at the Berlin Conservatory, where Herbert von Karajan was one of his teachers. These early years provided him with a solid grounding in the Germanic composers (Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Wagner, Schubert, Schumann, etc.) who always have been at the core of his repertoire. Otto Klemperer was another artistic influence.</p>
						<p>&quot;Klemperer was like a father to me,&quot; Rickenbacher reminisced. &quot;He would listen to my tapes and come to rehearsals and discuss everything with me. He'd invite me to come to London for a revival of <i>Fidelio</i> or the <i>Flying Dutchman.</i> He would share his recordings with me. We would discuss philosophy, writers, spiritual matters.&quot;</p>
						<p>Master classes with Pierre Boulez &quot;opened the horizons of 20th-century music.&quot;  &quot;Contemporary music didn't play an important role in my education until I met Pierre Boulez. Our repertoire included Stravinsky, Bartok, and maybe Schoenberg, but our studies stopped at the early years of the 20th century. Boulez opened the middle and late years of the century for me.&quot;</p>
						<p>Boulez also helped him connect with the French music that still plays a crucial role in his performances: the music of Messiaen, Milhaud, Debussy, etc.  </p>
						<p>These three musical strands -- Germanic repertoire, contemporary music, and French composition -- are ever-present in Rickenbacher's music in performance and on record.</p>
						<p>I first met Rickenbacher more than 10 years ago, when I was a publicist at Koch International, the recordings distributor. In those pre-Koch International Classics days, Koch-Schwann was the company's masthead, and the German &quot;label of premieres&quot; specialized, as it does today, in releasing interesting repertoire not available elsewhere. Rickenbacher, one of the label's leading conductors, had come to New York for a meeting, and I took him to that charming, now defunct, New York institution Rumplemeyer's. Over coffee and pastries we had a long, exhilarating conversation about music, art, and life, and I found him to be extremely cultured, with a touch of the old world.  </p>
						<p>More than a decade later, it is apparent that this conductor's diverse interests have led him to ever-new musical paths. One of his most ambitious projects is Koch-Schwann's ongoing <i>Unknown Richard Strauss</i> cycle, a 14-CD series encompassing everything from Strauss' early orchestral works to ballet music and a singspiel. The project was conceived in partnership with Koch-Schwann's founder Dieter Heuler, a long-time colleague of Rickenbacher's, and 11 of the 14 recordings will feature the conductor (the other three being non-orchestral).  </p>
						<p>&quot;When Dieter Heuler first started the label twenty years ago,&quot; Rickenbacher says, &quot;if I made a suggestion for a recording he would open a catalogue of recorded music and look inside. If there was <i>any</i> recording of <i>any</i> of the works I had suggested, he would say no to my idea immediately.</p>
						<p>&quot;A few years went by, and then Dieter Heuler became a little less rigorous -- say, if half the CD was a first recording, that would be okay. Now -- if just <i>one</i> work is a premiere, it gets approved by him! There is just so little music left to record!&quot;</p>
						<p>The <i>Unknown Richard Strauss</i> project is typical Rickenbacher in that it presents little-known works by a major composer.  The conductor is quick to point out that his career encompasses more than just &quot;collector&quot; repertoire; in concert, especially, he often leads performances of the &quot;classic&quot; symphonies and concertos. Still, on record he has been attracted to the unknown because he sees little point in rehashing the same works over and over again (and the recording industry's troublesome 1990s obviously supports this view). </p>
						<p>&quot;I think it is very important to look into the music of the young composer: the young Beethoven, Mahler, Bruckner, etc.,&quot; Rickenbacher states. &quot;In lectures and in biographies of the major composers, so many early works are mentioned, and yet have rarely been heard by anyone.</p>
						<p>&quot;A good example of this are two early Strauss symphonies, written when Strauss was age 16 and 19 [Koch-Schwann CD 365322:  Strauss Symphonies in D minor and F minor]. Brahms was in the audience when one of the symphonies was premiered! Brahms at age 19! Brahms' own Fourth Symphony was performed by the exact same orchestra one week later.&quot;</p>
						<p>Rickenbacher considers at least four of his previous recordings in this musicologically-important vein to have led to the Strauss cycle. His recording of Beethoven Cantatas (Koch-Schwann CD 314352) includes a work by the 20-year-old Beethoven written in 1790 upon the death of Emperor Joseph II; 32 bars were taken from the Cantata by Beethoven for the finale of the second act of <i>Fidelio</i>.</p>
						<p>On Virgin (out of print?), he released the first recording of all three symphonic movements from the beginning and end of Mahler's life: <i>Blumine</i>, one of Mahler's earliest orchestral pieces, originally composed as the second movement of the First Symphony and then cut by Mahler; <i>Todtenfeier</i>, originally a stand-alone work and later lengthened and revised as the first movement of the Second Symphony; and the Adagio of the 10th Symphony. Also on Virgin (CD 5615012) is Rickenbacher's recording of Bruckner's <i>Missa Solemnis,</i> a relatively early work by the composer, and, on Orfeo (312941), early cantatas by Richard Wagner, including, the conductor points out, one written in French.<br>
						</p>
						<p>For the <i>Unknown Richard Strauss</i> cycle, Rickenbacher trolled through the Strauss archives, located in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, establishing friendships with the two Strauss grandsons. For the cycle's <i>Symphonic Fantasies and Fragments</i> recording (Koch-Schwann CD 365332), he added arranger to his list of occupations by writing a new multi-movement symphonic fragment based on Act 1 of the rarely performed Strauss opera <i>Aegyptische Helena.</i> </p>
						<p>Several of the works in the <i>Unknown Richard Strauss</i> series feature the actor Peter Ustinov as narrator. The singspiel <i>The Donkey's Shadow</i> (Koch-Schwann CD 365482) merges Strauss' music with a story (based on the work's plot) written by Ustinov, who also serves as narrator and plays all the roles. Ustinov is also featured as narrator on a recording that pairs <i>Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme</i> with <i>Der B&uuml;rger als Edelmann</i> (Koch-Schwann CD 365782).</p>
						<p>What will the future bring for this multi-faceted conductor?  One place to start might be Rickenbacher's recent recordings for BMG/RCA, which have not yet been released in the U.S. Two recordings feature Ustinov, who turned 80 this year, and both have made it onto Germany's &quot;Klassik Top 20&quot; chart. Mussorgsky's <i>Pictures at an Exhibition,</i> with a narration written by Ustinov (RCA 74321 80400 2), features the actor in the role of Mussorgsky as he leads listeners through the &quot;exhibit.&quot; The second recording for the label, released in April, includes new texts (again written and performed by Ustinov) to accompany Beethoven's music for the ballet <i>Prometheus</i>. A third recording, of the complete <i>Prometheus</i> ballet music sans narration, will be released in the future.  </p>
						<p>Lately, Rickenbacher's interests have taken yet another new turn, and he has begun immersing himself in music written by Jewish composers (the conductor himself is not Jewish). The impetus for this new development is a project sponsored by New York's Milken Archives of American Jewish Music, which plans on creating &quot;the largest collection of American Jewish music ever recorded,&quot; according to the organization's promotional materials. For the Archives, Rickenbacher has recorded works by Harold Shapiro, Walter Scharf, Frederick Jacobi, and Jan Radzynski. This summer, he will record a piano concerto by Jacob Weinberg with the pianist Jorge Federico Osorio, with whom, by coincidence, he performed recently in Seattle, as well as works by Ofer Ben-Amots and Robert Stern. He also has recorded a Philip Glass <i>Psalm</i>, and there are plans for future recordings, not yet divulged.</p>
						<p>Rickenbacher always has been interested in contemporary music, although this is an aspect of his career that might not be altogether apparent to the U.S. public since most of his new music performances have been live, not on CD. A few notable exceptions are an all-Karl Amadeus Hartmann recording (Koch-Schwann CD 312952), and an Andr&eacute; Laporte CD (Koch Discover International CD 920458). As Principal Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (1978-1980), he commissioned many premieres, especially of works by young Scottish composers.  </p>
						<p>&quot;I would often give commissions to young composers for an intermezzo or opening piece, letting them know what the rest of the program would be so they could write something which complemented the program&quot; he says.</p>
						<p>He calls Gyorgi Ligeti &quot;one of the greatest living composers.&quot; In addition to Olivier Messiaen, he also mentions Henri Dutilleux, who he has visited in Switzerland, and Darius Milhaud (his recording of Milhaud's 6 Petites Symphonies and 3 Operas-Minutes has just been reissued on Koch Schwann Musica Mundi, CD 367722). He has also recorded works by Paul Hindemith, Paul Gilson, and Franz Schreker, among other early- to mid-20th-century composers.  </p>
						<p>My conversation with Rickenbacher ended with a characteristic comment about the importance of leading a well-rounded existence. &quot;I have always spent a lot of time in museums,&quot; this thoughtful, intellectual conductor said. &quot;I've read everything from Greek classical literature to writings from the present. Even poetry: sometimes you can find the answer to a question that has plagued you for days in four lines of a poem by Goethe.&quot;  </p>
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