Fuchs: Serenades Nos. 3, 4 & 5

‘A richly endowed composer, selfless teacher, and a rare human being’ proclaims Robert Fuchs’s memorial stone, and this esteem is reflected in his astonishing roster of pupils—Mahler, Sibelius, Wolf and Korngold among them. His own compositions, though, have been overlooked, unaccountably so on the evidence of these lovely Serenades. The Third is quite Brahmsian with a wonderfully bracing Hungarian finale. No 4 is a highly expressive and richly scored work, whilst No 5 casts its net yet wider—with anticipations of Mahler, and joyous references to the Vienna of the Strauss family.