Ewald Resources

Viktor Ewald

The most valuable resource on accurate, well-research information about Viktor Ewald can be found in a series of articles in the International Trumpet Guild Journal by Andre Smith. I have uploaded these articles to the files section of our ICON site for your perusal. They include:

• Viktor Ewald 
• The History of the Four Quintets for Brass by Victor Ewald
• The Four Brass Quintets of Viktor Ewald
• Brass in Early Russia

You can find a few of these articles in the Files/Articles section of our ICON Page.

From the New York Times, January 15, 1975

Victor Ewald is a name that has only recently turned up in, English‐language music encyclopedias, although he lived from 1860 to 1935. He was a Russian composer, who, like many of his kind, followed a profession and had music as an avocation. He was a civil engineer. He played the cello and the French horn and was an avid chamber‐music participant in St. Petersburg circles before the Revolution.

Three of his works for brass quintet were found not long ago in Rumania by Andre M. Smith; a trombonist and musicologist, who presented them to the American Brass Quintet for its series this season in Carnegie Recital Hall. The Brass Quintet No. 3 in D flat (Op. 7) was played Monday night in the second of the ensemble's four programs.

It is a conventional four movement Romantic score, very decently crafted. If it won't set the world on fire, it is certainly pleasant, to hear in its strongly melodic, tonally mellifluous way. In view of the shortage of works for brass quintet, it should be a useful addition to the repertory.

From Prince Regent's Band Blog: (Prince Regent's full website link here)

"Russian Revolutionaries Vol. I: Victor Ewald and Oskar Böhme" October 22, 2017

In 1972 the American Brass Quintet (ABQ) approached Smith with a view to including the additional Ewald Quintets in their 1974–75 season as the quintet was keen to focus on nineteenth-century repertoire in their programming. The first event in this celebration was a performance of the Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 6, as part of an ABQ concert at the Carnegie Recital Hall on the 18th of November, 1974. Following performances of all four quintets Smith was contacted by the principal horn of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Vitaly Buyanovsky (1928–93), who was eager to see the quintets. Smith sent his parts to the second (Op. 6) and third (Op. 7) quintets, retaining the fourth quintet (Op. 8) as he was ‘not yet satisfied with their accuracy’ and because the ABQ had exclusivity on this quintet for a year. Apparently Buyanovsky misinterpreted Smith’s insistence that the parts not be shared further and made his own copies of the two quintets which he then shared freely.

One of Buyanovsky’s pupils was the eminent Norwegian horn player Frøydis Ree Wekre (b. 1941). Ree Wekre made numerous copies of music she encountered during her studies. This included the Ewald Op. 6 and Op. 7 quintets which she later shared with the Empire Brass Quintet. Many contemporary editions of the second and third quintets appear to be offshoots of the Ree Wekre sources and make the fundamental change of altering the instrumentation from two cornets, althorn, tenorhorn and tuba to the more standard modern brass quintet of two trumpets, French horn, trombone and tuba. This raises the question of what other alterations have occurred. It would be erroneous to suggest that Ree Wekre’s sources were necessarily of Buyanovsky’s edition from Smith (thus providing an intriguing thread of Ewald–Gippius–Smith– Buyanovsky–Ree Wekre–Empire Brass) given that Ree Wekre’s studies in the autumn of 1967, the spring of 1968, and visits in subsequent years appear to be prior to Smith sharing his version with Buyanovsky (post 1974 at the earliest), thus suggesting another source. Indeed a set of parts to the Quintet in E-flat major, Op. 6 exist in the music library of the St Petersburg Philharmonic and it is these, with the kind permission of the library, that PRB have used. The parts are hand written on manuscript paper from the hugely productive printing firm of Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin (1851–1934) based in Valovaya ulitsa (‘Gross Street’) Moscow. This publishing house (‘The Association of Printing, Publishing and Book Trade ID Sytin and Co.’) was subsumed by the State Publishing House in 1919 and this set of parts was consigned to the Philharmonic library in 1950.

 For more about one of the controversies around publication of Ewald's works, read André Smith's open letter (scroll down in the comments section).