In memory of Franz Martin Küng (1948 - 2023)

In the Küng household, culture and especially music were very important. Franz Martin's mother was a piano teacher, and his father was a sought-after hairdresser in Baden and a wigmaker for the silent film industry. Little Franz accompanied his music-loving father to the opera from an early age, and in his ever-expanding collection of shellac records, he was able to recognize by the grooves the pieces in question, even before he could read the inscriptions on the sleeves.

As an undergraduate, he took ballet lessons, his talent was discovered and he was able to take part in performances at the Zurich Opera House. It wasn't until his time at boarding school in Zug, where he trained as a primary school teacher, that Franz realized his vocation was to become a pianist, not a dancer. He practiced his instrument for many hours a day and eventually studied piano privately with Irma Schaichet at the SSPM.

Apparently, he was playing Beethoven's First Piano Concerto during a piano lesson at Mrs. Schaichet's, when Géza Anda rang to speak to her. She asked him to wait in the garden until the end of the lesson, and it was there that Géza Anda heard Franz Martin playing the piano through the open window. The fact that he was looking for a replacement for the 1st Beethoven in Croatia was a happy coincidence for the young pianist, who gladly accepted the assignment. His subsequent international career took him from London to Athens, Stockholm and Rome. He was particularly fond of recounting his performance of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto under Ricardo Muti. Despite his love of the piano and concerts, he also discovered the downside of such a career: the incessant travel, the resulting loneliness and the great physical fatigue weighed more and more heavily on him. While he would have had to give countless concerts with a single program "like an assembly-line worker" to get a record contract, he realized he wasn't cut out for it.

So he accepted the post of piano teacher at Kanti Baden and found his true calling as a passionate pedagogue. If one of his pupils stood out for his "original talent", he was particularly strict. He knew that to practise this profession, you not only had to be gifted and hard-working, but also have an iron will. He demanded a lot of them, but he also supported them, letting them know that he believed in them and that they could do anything if they put their minds to it. And because he knew how important stage experience was, he organized several concerts each year for young artists.

Ever since his studies, he had felt very close to the SSPM. This led to his election to the committee of the Aargau section, of which he eventually took over the presidency. Of course, he often acted as an expert at diploma examinations, where he judged with competence, rigor and benevolence. The "old" SSPM with vocational training was "his" SSPM. After the latter was entirely entrusted to the Kalaidos HEM, he remained loyal to the SSPM, but said to me on the sidelines of a presidential conference: "Ah you know, I'm probably a bit out of time; it's good that you're doing it now". On November 24 - severely marked by illness - he handed over the Aargau section's documents to his successor - just two days before his death.