Austrian Folk Music

During the 1950s foreign travel began to be a popular pastime and with it came a new interest in the music of holiday places. For most British people Austria, in this context, meant Vienna and the Tyrol. Music from Vienna? Well, that was easy. Music from the Tyrol meant folkmusic, and that was much harder to find and to present.

Tom Praxmair had spent many years researching the folkmusic, dances and traditional instruments of his native Tyrol. His Kitzbiihel Singers and Dancers had a wide-ranging programme of folksongs, yodlers and schuhplattlers, well carved Pcrchtcn masks, all sorts of peasant implements and colourful Tyrolese costumes - all genuine and presented in a polished and amusing show. Much adaptation was, of course, required to transform their Cafe Praxmair Tinier Abend into concert performances that might please, entertain and educate audiences of nostalgic travellers or eager school children in the Midlands and the North - and ultimately at the Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls.

The Gay Tyrolese, so called for their boisterous good humour, travelled the length and breadth of the British Isles. They first came in 1957 for a two week try-out in remote places. They enchanted their audiences and we brought them again annually for month long tours for the next 20 years - some 400 concerts in all. They presented a great show with verve, energy and obvious enjoyment. They gave good musical value, brought a breath of the Tyrolese mountains to eager audiences, and played to full houses in all the great concert halls of the United Kingdom. In 1971 we were able to help Toni Praxmair fulfil an old ambition - a tour of the United States arranged by Sol Hurok, the legendary impresario.

The Engel Family of Reutte brought us wonderful Tyrolese folkmusic of a different sort. The Engels - parents and seven extraordinarily gifted children - presented a virtuoso programme of highest quality, serious and often academic. They gave us 8 very fine concerts in 1968 and 16 more in 1970. They attracted an appreciative chamber music audience in provincial centres where there had been little in the way of such music before.

In 1975 we brought the Zillertaler Rainer Sanger in the hope of continuing the line of folk ensembles. They gave good performances, but more in line with the apres-ski show the visitor to the Tyrol had come to expect. Other attempts to bring Austrian folk music ensembles to Britain were not very fruitful. Times had changed, and the tourist trade and the great prosperity it brought have injured, perhaps mortally, the ancient folk traditions of the Alpine valleys.