There are times, while
you are listening to a piece of unfamiliar
music, when a motif turns up that sounds
so familiar that you become desperately
sidetracked, leaving the music to continue
while you search in your memory for
the original of that all-too well-known
theme. Eschmann has several of these
moments and indeed, if he had chosen
to call the first of the op. 15 pieces
a "Meditation on a Theme from Frauenliebe
und Leben", maybe we would be applauding
his ingenuity rather than criticising
his derivativeness.
But there is another
sort of recognition, when a theme turns
up that, although you have never actually
heard it, you seem to have known it
all your life, as though it has been
an old friend all the time and you only
have to know it to recognize it as such.
Rather surprisingly, Eschmann manages
one of these, in the contrasting material
of the second of the op. 15 pieces.
It’s a bold theme, skirting vulgarity,
and all the more surprising for its
context. Maybe Stephen Hough, who likes
to build up anthological programmes,
could find a place for this piece.
If Eschmann ever wrote
another theme like that, it isn’t on
this disc, though parts of "Fortsetzung
und Schluss" and the first of the
op. 12 pieces head that way – again,
Eschmann is being bolder than usual.
For the rest, these are the mild-mannered
musings of a man who had studied with
Mendelssohn and loved Schumann. He was
also friendly with Brahms and Wagner,
but for his own creations he drew on
themes of a Schumannesque cut; not,
mostly, themes that Schumann would have
felt strong enough to use as basic material
but ones which he might, on an off-day,
have deigned to use to pad out a transitional
moment. Frankly, one wearies in the
attempt to engage with stuff that sounds
like music but mostly isn’t. Several
of the pieces are far from short, too.
The disc is part of
a series sponsored by the Zentralbibliothek
of Zürich, aimed at making known
the manuscript or rare scores it holds.
A thoroughly laudable initiative, and
I only wish I could feel they’d found
something more worthwhile. As a lifelong
exponent of rare music myself, I’m never
very happy about dismissing music that
might mean a lot to the composer’s happy
band of admirers, but I can only report
what I hear. As far as I can tell without
scores or comparative performances,
Jeremy Filsell does all he can, the
recording is rich and warm and the case
for the defence is pleaded authoritatively
by Robert Matthew-Walker.
Christopher Howell
Jeremy Filsell (piano) 
