Early June 1932 brought the festival of the German “Allgemeiner Musikverein” back to Zurich for the first time in more than twenty years. This was still, however, an innocent gesture without the political, overtly hegemoniacal overtones that any Swiss-based German cultural happening would soon acquire under the Nazis. The festival was to have taken place in Graz in Austria, but Graz had pulled out at relatively short notice, at which Zurich had stepped into the breach. The two main events were Hindemith's oratorio Das Unaufhörliche, which opened the Festival, and then a performance of Schoeck's Penthesilea under the baton of Max Conrad in the same Zurich production that had been given four months earlier. Among those present were Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger, Ernst Krenek, and Ernest Bloch. Schoeck was delighted with it, though the reviews were mixed. Aloys Mooser (“snake-head” of 1923) remained unimpressed, remarking upon the work's supposed conventionality and its mish-mash of speech and song. The reviewer of the Musical Times (one “M.U.”), however, was of a different opinion. While praising the “excellent presentation” of Hindemith's oratorio and its “splendid polyphonic choruses,” he felt that “the composer, though he has mastered his craft, is not yet master of himself…. On the other hand, the Penthesilea of the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck made a big, general impression.”