Franui
Schubertlieder, Brahms Volkslieder, Mahlerlieder

Johannes Eder, clarinet, bass clarinet
Andreas Fuetsch, tuba
Romed Hopfgartner, alto saxophone, clarinet
Markus Kraler, double bass, accordion
Angelika Rainer, harp, zither, voice
Bettina Rainer, dulcimer, voice
Markus Rainer, trumpet, voice
Andreas Schett, trumpet, voice
Martin Senfter, valve trombone, voice
Nikolai Tunkowitsch, violin

Guests:
Elisabeth Harringer, violin (Schubertlieder)
Sven-Eric Bechtolf, voice (Schubertlieder, No. 17)
Cornelia Rainer, bandoneon, voice (Brahms Volkslieder)
Sylvia Rainer, voice (Brahms Volkslieder)
Daniel Schmutzhard, baritone (Mahlerlieder, No. 11–14)

Sometimes Franui do sound like a brass band.
When the tuba is putting pressure on from below, and some movement comes
in from above. The trumpets, pounding. Rolling, the saxophone, squealing, the clarinet, and any moment now it’s all going to break into a sweat. Franui can do that, too.
But then: silence. Only the hovering of a harp chord, perhaps the neat plonk- plonk of a plucked double bass.
Then the singing starts.
At full blast, which at first makes you think of folks in a pub, after the third round of beers, but all of a sudden it condenses into a seraphic hovering, a harmony made of the most delicate, transparent fabrics. But just when you think you’ve finally recognized the band for what they are: a really sensitive bunch, the noise is back, boom-ta-boom-ta, and the bona-fide brass band comes down on the bow-tied softies with a mighty roar.
Franui. When Andreas Schett gets up during a concert to introduce the ensemble – who refer to themselves as a “banda” – hilarity is guaranteed. Slowly, slowly we learn which route to follow on the map, until a turn to the right finally takes us towards Innervillgraten, a village in East Tyrol, and behind Innervillgraten lies a mountain pasture named Franui, which is also the name of the ensemble, but the mountain pasture was there first, so the ensemble was named after the mountain pasture.

Incidentally, Franui themselves have also accumulated quite a history. When Schett founded the band back in 1993, he was in his early twenties and had just established the “Kulturwiese” (or “cultural pastures”) festival in an attempt to tune his native village of Innervillgraten into the vibes of the musical metropolises. His plans were reduced to ashes when the “Kulturwiese” headquarters went up in flames thanks to the efforts of an arsonist. So Schett, looking for a safe haven, moved to Innsbruck and took Franui with him. The band, not the pasture.

At first Franui were regarded as part of the “new folk music” trend emerging at the time; but while the trend went on and evaporated into nothing, Franui emancipated themselves, heightened their profile and confidently went their own way. While openly committed to enjoying the great variety of music available, the folk music band also no longer attempted to disavow their musical education, drawing ever closer to the realms of high culture, to the music cabinets of the great Masters.
Already on Franui’s album “Frische Ware,” a compilation of funeral music they recorded in 2000, every once in a while the brassy hammering and gasping seemed to be imbued with the spirit of Franz Schubert. In 2004, on “Das Ende vom Lied,” they went to extremes: grief and sorrow meeting in the dancehall – an enchanting analysis of musical cause and effect – was it the romantic melodies of Schubert and Mahler that made sense to the brass band, or was it the other way round? Franui most sensibly decided: Not a clue!

The “Schubertlieder” program was the first episode in Franui’s trilogy of classical deconstruction. Schett and his co-musicians did not approach Schubert’s music simply as performers, but interpreted it, not straightforwardly but bending low over the composer’s motifs, snorting through their own nostrils. [...]