The tradition of bringing out New Year publications on January 2, ‘Berchtold’s Day’, dates back to the 17th century. Societies and guilds used to provide young people in the city with printed books, illustrations, or music in exchange for a financial contribution, which helped fund the heating of the society rooms. In 2005, an album featuring piano music by Winterthur composer Johann Carl Eschmann, whose documents are archived in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, marked the revival of this age-old tradition in a new form.

The New Year release for 2024 brings together works by six composers, all of whom except one were born and trained in French-speaking countries. Even Paul Juon had Romanic roots since his grandfather had emigrated from the Swiss canton of Grisons to Russia around 1830. The album features short pieces grouped around César Franck’s Sonata in A Major. Composed between 1880 and 1924, all the pieces, except Ernest Bloch’s three lieder movements From Jewish Life (1924), whose Judaistic timbre became Bloch’s trademark, conform to our present-day perception of a rhapsodic fin-de-siècle sound.