View of Othmar Schoeck's home
The book accompanying the Othmar Schoeck Festival 2023 is primarily dedicated to family and local history aspects.
In the 19th century, the landscape painter Alexandre Calame described the area around Brunnen in Schwyz and the view of Lake Uri as "Le plus beau pays du monde". And this is reminiscent of the German violinist Wolfgang Schneiderhan's dictum about Dreilinden in Lucerne: "The most beautiful place ever given to a conservatory." Music and landscape seem to interact, both in Brunnen and in Lucerne. However, Othmar Schoeck never studied in Lucerne - the conservatory was only founded in 1952 - but in Zurich and Leipzig (with Max Reger).
His father, the painter Alfred Schoeck, himself the son of a wealthy Basel silk merchant, visited Brunnen in 1870, married the hotelier's daughter Agathe Fassbind there and had a studio and home built for himself on the "Gütsch" with the meaningful name "Villa Ruhheim". With Agathe, he had four sons: Paul (architect and playwright), Ralph (professor of mechanical engineering and officer), Walter (hotelier in Brunnen and talented amateur cellist) and the composer and conductor Othmar (1886-1957), the baby of the family.
Othmar and his brothers: "four elements"
Theater director Alvaro Schoeck - a great-grandson of the aforementioned Alfred - and musicologist Chris Walton, author of a dissertation on Othmar Schoeck, have published an accompanying book for the fifth Othmar Schoeck Festival Brunnen from the beginning of September 2023, which sheds light on family aspects of the Schoecks and thus provides information about Othmar's environment and home. This ranges from the whimsical notes of the nanny, who refers to the Schoeck sons as "the four elements", to the who's who in Brunnen and Ingenbohl from 1900 onwards, entitled Othmar is here! from Katrin Spelinova to the novella-like fragment At night with the Schoeck brothers by the Schwyz writer Meinrad Inglin from 1968.
The atmospheric landscape oil paintings on the cover and in the book are all by Alfred Schoeck and are complemented by many contemporary black and white photos of the Schoeck family.
Le plus beau pays du monde? Othmar Schoeck's environment in Central Switzerland, book accompanying the Othmar Schoeck Festival 2023, edited by Alvaro Schoeck and Chris Walton, 180 p., Fr. 20.00 (+ postage), Müsigricht, Steinen 2023, ISBN 978-3-9525658-2-7
