Felix Woyrsch: Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 65

Felix Woyrsch (1860-1944)

Piano Trio in E minor, Op. 65

I. Mäßig bewegt 0:00
II. Sehr langsam, ausdrucksvoll 9:36
III. Sehr gemächlich 18:10
IV. Belebt, doch nicht zu schnell 22:17

Hyperion Trio

Felix Woyrsch (1860 – 1944) was a German composer and choir director. Woyrsch was born in Troppau, just over the Prussian border in Austrian Silesia. He was raised in Dresden and later Altona, a suburb of Hamburg, in a lower middle class family of limited means. Largely self-taught in music, he did study for some time with Ernst August Heinrich Chevallier. He became director of the Altonaer Liedertafel in 1887 and director of the Altona Church Choir in 1893. In 1895 he took over the direction of the Altona Singakademie, and became organist at the Friedenskirche and then at the Johanniskirche. In 1903 he created municipal symphonic and folk music concerts. Already a music professor since 1901, he was elected into the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1917. He worked as a conductor, and as Altona's city music director, until 1931. In 1936 he was given the Goethe Medal, followed by the Beethoven Prize in Berlin upon his retirement in 1937. His main influences included his friend Brahms as well as Bach, Palestrina, Lassus, and Heinrich Schütz. Although Woyrsch quite valued the music of his contemporaries such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Hindemith, he felt less committed to musical innovation as a composer. Rather, he devoted himself to the development of a personal style in the classical-romantic tradition. After his death, he quickly fell into oblivion.