Christobal Halffter: Tiento del primer tono y batalla imperial para orquestra (1986)
Othmar Schoeck: Nachhall, o. 70 for middle voice and orchestra
Arthur Honegger: Symphony no. 4 "Deliciae Basiliensis" (1946)

Jun Mo Yang, Baritone
Philharmonic Orchestra of Lübeck
Roman Brogli-Sacher, conductor

Super Audio CD

As a conductor and patron of the arts, Paul Sacher was an outstanding figure in the cultural life of his native Switzerland. Thomas Mann memorialized him within his lifetime in the novel Doctor Faustus, in which Paul Sacher conducts concerts of a “Swiss Chamber Orchestra” – nota bene: with contemporary compositions and early music, Sacher’s two main musical interests. As the son of a seamstress and a trucking company employee, Sacher grew up in relatively modest circumstances in an outlying neighborhood of Basel. In 1934 he became the “richest Swiss” at one stroke when he married Maja Stehlin, the widow of industrialist Emanuel Hoffmann of the Hoffmann-LaRoche pharmaceutical company. Yet, whoever has money at his disposal, so the credo of the new billionaire, “must know that it is borrowed, that he must do something with it.” With almost frenetic zeal and with unconditional generosity, Paul Sacher gave his wealth back to the cultural life of his native land. Yet, this involved much more than “just” the acquisition of material and the de facto enrichment of the repertoire through some two hundred composition commissions. Paul Sacher knew the value of a mature audience that allows itself to be challenged, and that is just as open to the discovery of unknown old masters as it is to contemporary art. Through long-term groundwork, including with his Basel Chamber Orchestra (founded in 1926), he succeeded in fostering a new audience that, together with the musicians and artists, understood itself as a dedicated community – an emphatic stand against the erosion of the substance of culture that was also denounced by composers such as Halffter and Honegger.