Fidelio F. Finke

Divertimento für Kammerorchester

Fidelio F. Finke (1891-1968) was born in Bohemia and studied piano and composition at the Prague Conservatoire. He stayed in Prague to work as a music teacher, and from 1920 was employed at the city's German Academy for Music and Performing Arts. In 1926 he was appointed professor, becoming principal the following year. After the expropriation of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia in 1945, the Soviet occupying forces transferred him to Dresden, where he worked as principal of the Music Academy before taking on a position as professor of composition at the Leipzig University of Music. His 1942 application to join the Nazi party having lapsed due to "political unreliability", he became a member of East Germany's Socialist Unity Party in 1946. The Divertimento for Chamber Orchestra, written in 1964, is one of his last orchestral works. Throughout its long and eventful history, Edition Peters has consistently sought to support contemporary music, making it accessible in high-quality scores. The years in which Germany, and the publishing house itself, were divided between East and West form an important chapter in the company's story. The output of composers from the East German firm - then known as VEB Edition Peters, Leipzig - forms a unique and valuable part of the company's identity and, more widely, of European cultural history. Their works are compositionally and aesthetically diverse, while sharing a communicative creative drive. The artistic independence of the music created in East Germany between 1949 and 1990 makes this repertoire well worth rediscovering.