Hugo Käch

Hugo Käch was born on 26 September 1927 in Lucerne (Switzerland). He received his first professional musical training at the Lucerne Conservatory and, after completing his studies there, initially taught music theory at the same institution. He subsequently studied composition with Paul Hindemith at the University of Zurich and conducting with Igor Markevitch. Käch later became a master pupil and assistant of Herbert von Karajan.
In 1961 Herbert von Karajan engaged Käch as a conductor at the Vienna State Opera. Contemporary biographical accounts describe him as the first Swiss conductor to hold such a position there. Käch conducted both opera and ballet and was involved in numerous performances during the early 1960s.
Karajan also played an important role in Käch's second career. Around 1967 he introduced him to the production of musical films, initially as an assistant and subsequently as a director. Käch gradually specialized in the visual direction of concerts and opera performances for film and television. His thorough musical training enabled him to follow a score in detail and to anticipate musical events when planning camera movements and changes of perspective. He thereby became one of the leading specialists in the field of televised classical music.
During the following decades Käch worked with many of the most important conductors, orchestras and soloists of his time. Among his notable productions were performances involving Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Günter Wand, Lorin Maazel and Zubin Mehta, as well as leading European orchestras and opera houses. Altogether he directed several hundred television broadcasts and film productions of concerts and operas.
Käch became particularly associated with the televised New Year's Concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic and is documented as television director from 1981 to 1986 during the Lorin Maazel years and also returned for the 1988 New Year's Concert conducted by Claudio Abbado.
Another long-standing association began in 1982, when Claudio Abbado founded the Filarmonica della Scala in Milan. Käch subsequently directed numerous television broadcasts from La Scala and remained connected with productions there for many years. In 1998 he was responsible for the television direction of the internationally televised production of Puccini's Turandot in Beijing's Forbidden City, staged by Zhang Yimou and conducted by Zubin Mehta.
Despite his extensive international activity in film and television, Käch maintained close ties with musical life in Switzerland. He had already worked in Schaffhausen as a conductor during the 1950s. In 1974 he returned there to become director of the municipal music school. During his tenure the institution was expanded by a professional division and developed into the Musikschule und Konservatorium Schaffhausen. Käch remained its director until 1984.
In 1975 he additionally took over the Frauenchor and Männerchor Schaffhausen, the ensembles that later formed the Schaffhauser Oratorienchor. He continued to conduct these choirs until 1991. Under his direction they appeared at major musical events including the International Bach Festival in Schaffhausen, the Carinthian Summer in Ossiach and the Ravenna Festival.
Hugo Käch was married for almost fifty years to the piano teacher Ruth Käch-Tanner, and the couple had five children. He died on 31 December 2003 in Flurlingen near Schaffhausen (Switzerland).

Hugo Käch also remained active as a composer throughout his life. His output consists mainly of sacred music, including choral works, cantatas, oratorios and compositions on religious themes, but he also wrote secular works, among them an orchestral suite, a work for wind orchestra and several pieces of chamber music. His known compositions range from the orchestral suite Okesa (1956) and the wind-orchestra prelude Gotthard (1959) to large-scale later works such as the oratorio Henry Dunant (1988), the cantata Laudes Creaturarum (1989), the Requiem für Helmut Wobisch (1990) and the chamber opera Paracelsus (1993).

In my possession is the autograph manuscript of Käch's Trio for piano, violin and cello. The work lasts approximately fifteen minutes and is conceived as a single continuous movement divided into five sections: Allegro energico – Andante cantabile – Allegro energico – Adagio espressivo – Allegro. The manuscript is dated at the end “Wien, 6.7.1967”, placing its composition during the period in which Käch was still closely involved with Vienna's musical life and shortly before his increasing concentration on film and television production.

The manuscript originally bore a dedication to Dr. Walter Strebi and his wife Maria Strebi-Erni, although their names were subsequently scratched out. The Strebi-Erni connection is noteworthy: Walter and Maria Strebi-Erni were prominent figures in Lucerne's cultural life, and Maria was closely connected with her brother, the artist Hans Erni. Käch himself contributed to the 1972 volume Zeitgenossen sehen Hans Erni, which indicates that he belonged to the wider cultural circle surrounding the Erni family.

The Trio was premiered on 15 February 1973 at the Kunsthaus Luzern by the Sattler Trio, consisting of Gerty Sattler, piano, Klaus Sattler, violin, and Samuel Langmeier, cello. The score remained unpublished and is therefore made available here for the first time.