# Paul Buttner



## Joachim Raff (Jan 31, 2020)

Paul Büttner was born in Dresden on 10 December 1870. Information on him is not easy to come by. I have not checked the current or even the 1980 Grove but Grove V had nothing on him at all. The extensive notes compiled for this release by the redoubtable Per Skans (usually associated with Olympia, especially their incomparable Miaskovsky series, and Bis) function as a very generous alternative reference.

Checking my old and admirable 'A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians' (J.M. Dent 1924) I can supplement what Mr Skans has written. Büttner was a pupil of Draeseke in Dresden. He taught there between 1896 and 1907. He was also active as a music critic in Dresden. The Munich-based, Alfred Einstein's entry in the dictionary says: 'as a symphonist, has been somewhat influenced by Anton Bruckner.' The entry lists four symphonies but does not give dates for them. They are No. 1 in F (1899); No. 2 in G; No. 3 in D flat major (said by Herr Einstein to his best-known work … at least in 1924) and No. 4 in B minor. There are various symphonic phantasies, an overture to Napoleon's Tomb, Saturnalia for drums and wind instruments, a violin sonata, a string quartet in G minor, male choruses and two operas: Anka and Das Wunder der Isis.

As a staunchly anti-Nazi Social Democrat he was driven from his post of artistic director of the Dresden Conservatoire in 1933 and survived giving private music tuition and taking refuge in composition. After the end of the war his name was given fitful life by the conductors Joseph Keilberth, Heinz Bongartz and Kurt Masur. His works are published by Edition Peters in Leipzig. _Rob Barnett_

PAUL BÜTTNER: A CATALOGUE OF THE ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

1899: Symphony No.1 in F: 45 minutes 
1908: Symphony No.2 in G: 28 minutes 
1915: Symphony No.3 in D flat major: 34 minutes 
1912-19:Symphony No.4 in B minor: 41 minutes + (Sterling cd)
1917: Konzertstück for Violin and Orchestra in G major: 18 minutes
1920: Präludium, Fuge und Epilog "Eine Vision" for orchestra
1925: Heroic Overture: 14 minutes + (Sterling cd)
1929: Overture in B minor
1932: "Slawischer Tanz, Idylle und Fuge" for orchestra

and

Overture "Napoleon and the Hundred Days"
Fantasy "Der Krieg" for orchestra
Fantasy "Über ein Deutsches Volkslied" for orchestra
Elegie for small orchestra
"Saturnalia" for winds and percussion


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## Joachim Raff (Jan 31, 2020)

Recommended listening:


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