Juon, Paul

Paul Juon – Little Symphony for String Orchestra, op. 87

(b. Moscow, 6 March 1872 – d. Vevey, 21 August 1940)

(ca. 1930)

Allegretto (alla Siciliana) p.2
Quasi tempo di Menuetto p.9
Andante. p.12
In modo antico (non troppo Allegro). p.14

Preface
Paul Juon was born in Moscow to Swiss parents. Following his musical studies as a youth at the Moscow Conservatory (with Jan Hřímaly, violin and Anton Arensky and Sergey Taneyev, composition), he relocated to Berlin in 1894 to pursue further studies with Woldemar Bargiel and then settled there permanently in 1897. Between the Berlin periods was a brief stint teaching at the Baku (Azerbaijan) Conservatory. He earned a professorial appointment at the Hochschule für Musik in 1911 and was elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1919. He retired to Vevey, Switzerland, where he died at age 68.

Though Juon did compose a quantity of Lieder as well as incidental music and even one opera (during his Baku tenure), the bulk of his output was instrumental and absolute in nature, including a formidable plethora of chamber works. His facility in writing both short forms and multi-movement structures, his skill in composing for a variety of instrumental combinations, and his relatively conventional approach to harmony—articulated in his own textbooks on the subject—have earned him the nickname the “Russian Brahms.” Of course, nearly all composers of absolute music, especially those based in German-speaking countries near the turn of the twentieth century, have at one point or another been compared to Brahms. In Juon’s case, his particular blending of Germanic and Slavic qualities in his compositional style is unique, a product of his individual ethnic and life circumstances. As Edwin Evans so aptly put in his essay in Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music, “Juon is a German composer haunted by Slavonic vision and memories … but otherwise loyal in his allegiance to the German classical tradition.” …

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