Schoeck's Penthesilea
On behalf of the Othmar Schoeck Society, Beat A. Föllmi has re-edited the opera's badly flawed score. For financial reasons, this brings the complete edition of Schoeck's works to a premature end.
A long-awaited new edition in the music world has just been published by Musikverlag
Hug published: the first critical edition of the opera Penthesilea (1927) by Othmar Schoeck. Perhaps the most important stage work by the Swiss composer (1886-1957) has so far always been performed on the basis of a score with numerous flaws. The Swiss musicologist Beat Föllmi, professor at the University of Strasbourg and long-time director of the Othmar Schoeck Complete Edition, which is published on behalf of the Othmar Schoeck Society (OSG), has now painstakingly compiled a fully corrected version and eliminated hundreds of errors, some of which are serious. The new edition follows the composer's intentions as closely as possible and thus makes a central work in Schoeck's oeuvre accessible for the stage and for scholars in a modern edition.
With the publication of this important volume, the complete edition of Othmar Schoeck's works has unfortunately come to a premature conclusion. Despite intensive efforts, the OSG as the sponsor of the complete edition has not succeeded in providing the necessary funds for its continuation. The complete edition was begun in 1988 and 11 volumes (in 17 parts) have been published to date, including the majority of the operas, the early songs, the choral works, the piano works and the complete orchestral works including the concertos. The OSG continues to exist as a society.
Othmar Schoeck, Complete Works, Series III: Volume 14 (A+B), Penthesilea, edited by Beat A. Föllmi on behalf of the Othmar Schoeck Society, score, 2 volumes fully bound, Fr. 288.00, Hug Musikverlage, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-906415-24-6
