This acquaintance inspired young Feischner to begin composing songs, which he later described as “naive and romantic…they probably felt the influence of Tchaikovsky.”[1] He attended the Leipzig Conservatory until 1931, studying composition with Hermann Grabner.
Composer and music critic Riho Päts, who attended Ernits's performance of the bassoon sonatina and wind quintet, condemned the former as a work of “sprawling linearity…unable to attract any substantial interest,” but praised the latter for its “originality, humorous grotesqueness and strong western influences.”[3] The quintet appears to have been Feischner's most successful work of the time, winning a prize at a competition organized by the Estonian Society of Academic Sound Artists and receiving repeated mention in various newspaper articles.
His compositional style of this period is unknown, since none of these works have survived to the present day, though Feischner himself cited the influences of Bach, Schubert, Hindemith and Stravinsky, particularly the latter's approach to instrumentation.
Premiered in 1958, the production starred Fritz Wunderlich, Lore Paul, Horst Günter, Gisela Litz, Benno Kusche, Alfred Pfeifle, Manfred Gerbert, Bruno Samland, and Ernst Ronnecker, with Hans Müller-Kray conducting.
[7] Stylistically, the few extant recordings of Feischner's later works suggest an affinity towards Stravinsky's early compositional vocabulary: prominent woodwinds, brass and percussion, chromatic tonal harmonies, and often humorous character.