Bob Suggs conducts the ensemble at the concert - please click image for larger version

Bob Suggs studies a score before rehearsal

Brass ensemble music not heard in over sixty years resounded on June 29, 2006 in Baltimore’s Villa Julie College Theater. The music was that of the Trompeterchor der Stadt Wien [Brass Choir of the City of Vienna], the ensemble for which Richard Strauss composed his rousing Festmusik der Stadt Wien. Although it may have been one of the first professional brass ensembles of the 20th century, the Vienna Trompeterchor (most active between 1931 and 1944) and its repertoire have languished in obscurity due to the group’s Nazi associations.

Trumpeter Bob Suggs, Professor of Music at Villa Julie College and former member of the Annapolis Brass Quintet and the United States Army Band, organized the event to showcase the music of Karl Pilss (1902-1979). Pilss, the subject of Suggs’s dissertation, composed a wealth of music for the Vienna Trompeterchor, much of which is not published. Suggs acquired copies of the unpublished Pilss manuscripts from Robert King and used computer notation software to create new performing editions of the music. Suggs’s article detailing his research, Brilliant Music for a Dark Era: Karl Pilss, Helmut Wobisch, and the Trompeterchor der Stadt Wien, appeared in the January 2004 issue of the ITG Journal. (Please see article link below)

As he told the audience during the concert, Suggs organized this “brass players’ party” in order to finally hear the Pilss pieces performed by live brass rather than his computer. Joining the party were twenty-five brass musicians from the Baltimore area including trumpeters Don Tison (former principal trumpet of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra) and Luis Engelke (Towson University Trumpet Professor). Also performing were some current and former members of all six Washington, D.C. service bands.

The program included published works such as Uhl’s Festfanfare as well as another Festfanfare by Pilss. Robert King’s arrangement of Gabrieli’s Canzon in Double Echo (for three choirs) and Liszt’s Marsch der Kreuzfahrer added some variety as well as historical context. The only Pilss work published by Robert King, Heldenklage [1934], was featured along with unpublished Pilss works edited by Suggs: Frohe Musik (in bright, neo-Baroque style), Reitermarsch, Turmmusik, Antifonien, and Fanfare und Feierlicher Einzug. The concert closed with the work performed most often by the Vienna Trompeterchor, Karl Pilss’s Musik für den Wiener Rathaushof, which featured multiple brass choirs complete with herald trumpeters in the balconies of the auditorium.

Web link:
Brilliant Music for a Dark Era: Karl Pilss, Helmut Wobisch, and the Trompeterchor der Stadt Wien ITG Journal, January 2004, 600K PDF

Source: Elisa Koehler Photos: Danielle Robinson (top) Elisa Koehler (bottom)