CPO diaries

[Brian]

Ferdinand Hiller was a friendly guy, and made friends with everybody. As a teenager, his best friend was Mendelssohn; later, his friend Schumann dedicated the piano concerto to him and his friend Chopin dedicated the nocturnes op. 15. His friend Rossini helped him stage his first opera, and he had a long correspondence with Alkan and Berlioz.

Hiller's own taste was more conservative than, say, Berlioz; he succeeded Mendelssohn in Leipzig and his formative experience as a teen was when his teacher, Hummel, took him to see Schubert at the piano for Winterreise. The CPO booklet for this album was not uploaded to Qobuz, but it appears that one symphony here was published and the other was not.

The two symphonies are very much in the same mold as Mendelssohn and maybe younger Schumann. The melodies are consistently less memorable, and I couldn't point to any feature of either as original. Both start in an energetic, stormy minor key and then gradually coil around to major key endings. Perfectly pleasant and harmless.

There is an unusual amount of performance noise (instrumental clicks, chair squeaks).



This is a mixed collection: Liszt works arranged by Dupré for organ and orchestra, by Weiner and Bischof for orchestra without organ, and a solo organ version by Liszt himself of his symphonic poem Orpheus.

We start with Dupré's rendering of a Fantasy and Fugue on a Chorale by Meyerbeer into effectively a full 27-minute organ concerto. It is fabulous. The organ part is still juicy, but Dupré adds fun brass fanfares (in 5'), growling bassoons, and a series of woodwind-organ duels in the fugue. Since much of the music is very quiet or involves very low bass organ sustains, I do advise against listening when there is any background noise in your environment. My air conditioner affected my experience.

The Weiner (Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen) and Liszt arrangements are predictably excellent, though Weinen... loses some of its coherence and consistency when rewritten for full orchestra. Orpheus by contrast is pretty darn great in this form. Finally we have Bischof, who did not invent Biscoff cookies, and whose arrangement of the Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H has been described by other commentators as having the bright, even lurid colors of Schoenberg orchestral arrangements. Sure enough, the most memorable part may be the highly decorated wind, brass, and percussion parts. It's bright and wild. Some of the interjections at 11' are maybe in poor taste, but fun.

An interesting disc for Liszt and orchestration junkies.



I've heard so much about E.T.A. Hoffmann as writer and inspiration for Schumann, Offenbach, etc. but this might be my first introduction to his actual music. The overtures are a pleasing mix of Weber and Rossini ("Das Kreuz an der Ostsee" quotes "Il signor Bruschino"), with a bit of obvious late Mozart too ("Der Trank der Unsterblichkeit").

The main course is the half-hour ballet Arlequin, which is more in the classical mold than the throughwritten style of Adolphe Adam a little bit later. I think the track titles are not ideally translated; one of them is called "Indicates That They Have Lost The Belt." Anyway, the ballet is completely wonderful fluff.

An hour of cheery fun light music.



Joining the GMG crowd on this one and...yup. These are great. I own the CPO twofer disc of various Herzogenberg trios and quartets. Might need this one as well. Brahmsish, but not directly imitative. Highly communicative and emotional, but not sappy. Just really darn good romantic cello music. My sense is that the later sonatas are more small-scale, more for domestic playing, in contrast to the bigger First.

[Brian]

More endearing wind music by Frantisek Rössler, a.k.a. Antonio Rosetti. Dieter Klöcker's clarinet is unusually "fruity" in this recording, and the music is gentle, friendly, and breezily virtuosic. Neither concerto is on Mozart's level, of course, but they're very pleasant. The double horn concerto is in the same mold, and is similar to the other double horn concertos I've heard from this composer. I swear I've heard one of the finale's melodies in another piece before. A pleasant late classical hour.



These are post-Strauss tone poems, reminiscent of Karlowicz and maybe Korngold. They use a big, colorful orchestra to depict spring, idylls, and a festival. (Qobuz didn't upload the booklet so I am unaware of additional plot details.) Where Marx falls short of Strauss and even Karlowicz is his melodic inspiration. Instead, the motifs here are more like coathangers on which to place rich, colorful orchestral effects like clothing. Broadly speaking, Eine Fruhlingsmusik is celebratory and glittering, Idylle is calmer and slower with plenty of harp, and Feste im Herbst is a lot like the first piece again, but with a small Hungarian episode at about 9:30.

The result is ear candy: sweet, rich, entertaining, but instantly forgettable. I probably won't be back for more.



This is the fourth recording of the Rautavaara violin concerto, and I think maybe the third of the serenade, which is one of two written for Hilary Hahn. (The other is omitted here because it was completed by Kalevi Aho after the composer's death.) The concerto is maybe not as reverently spiritual as 90s-00s Rautavaara, instead having more in common with Sibelius, Nielsen, a little Vaughan Williams, maybe even the slow movement of the Korngold concerto. It's in two movements of about equal length: one slowish, one fastish, with lots of monkeying around by the xylophone and (I think) glockenspiel in the background. The fast movement has an extended slow interlude for solo oboe, with the violin remaining respectfully silent at first, then taking over the material. The final minutes feature a lot of virtuosic fiddling and a punchy orchestral accompaniment, but not a lot of thematic-motivic conclusion. Instead of a puzzle being resolved, the concerto's ending is a mood being fulfilled.

The first of his two Serenades, written for his wife in his final years, is suitably ethereal, beautiful, heartwarming, and simple. It's not so far, indeed, from the soundworld of the Four Last Songs. Rautavaara was economizing with notes, making them all sing of his love. The violinist is active as leader almost constantly.

Autumn Gardens does a great job sounding like its title. It's moody, slow, beautiful but decaying at the same time. It's not quite autumnal in the melancholic Brahmsian sense, but rather more like a picturesque ruin, seeing the prettiness in the falling leaves. The first two movements play without pause, though there is not much difference between them, except perhaps that the second is even slower. The third movement has a little bit of faster motion at times - falling leaves? calling birds?



This is a 90-minute set featuring nine composers, including at least one excerpted part of a larger work.

CD1
Sara Gurowitsch, Kol Nidrei: Simple, almost like a recitative and aria; very sweet, positive musical language. 6 minutes
Jacob Weinberg, Clarinet Quintet: Influenced a little bit by Roussel-like neoclassicism, maybe Euro cafe jazz, and containing a central recitative and aria movement. (This time labeled as such.) The very short finale is the only place where you might detect Eastern European influence. 12 minutes
Samuel Gardner, Hebrew Fantasy: Here's where the Jewish musical influences really come out to play for the first time. Wonderful solos for every player (the viola gets a good tune in the second movement) and a satisfying alternation of episodes. 17 minutes
Fabian Gorodezky, Jewish Rhapsody: This seems to be a series of folk/popular melody arrangements with skillful writing of each tune/accompaniment but basically no transitions between them or larger structure. Without access to a booklet, I don't know if the melodies really are arrangements, or if they are original. 15 minutes

CD2
Alexander Krein, Esquisses hebraïques: Description is somewhat like the Gardner piece, but shorter movements all around. Also enjoyable. 10 minutes
Sholom Secunda, Song for the Guemara: A simple, beautiful, hushed slow ballad. 4 minutes
Boris Levenson, Two Jewish Folk Songs: Exactly what it says. The second one is a dance, so there's a slow-fast structure to the piece. 6 minutes
Alexander Grechaninov, Clarinet Sonata No. 2., second movement arranged for clarinet with string quartet: I do not know the original piece but this excerpt fits perfectly in the program. At least one variation is a solo clarinet cadenza. 10 minutes
Abraham Wolf Binder, Variations on a Prayer Motif: This has been paired last with the Grechaninov because of the structural similarities between two sets of variations, I think, and because they both take us back from the explicitly Jewish folk music of the middle of the program back to the broader western classical language again. 8 minutes

I suppose I should be aware of a prejudice in myself, that I enjoy the "more Jewish sounding" or more traditional music here more than the ordinary Western clarinet quintets that happen to be by Jewish composers. But that's not because I make any particular demand of the composers; it's because I find the musical language so attractive.



Robert Fuchs was a legendary teacher - students include Enescu, Korngold, Madetoja, Mahler, Melartin, Schmidt, Schreker, Sibelius, Wolf, and Zemlinsky - and a friend of Brahms, who admired his work. He was so modest and unwilling to engage in self-promotion that his own compositions never gained much ground in the repertoire. I've enjoyed his five string serenades, by far his most famous works (though they are roughly ordered in quality, with No. 1 being the best). I've also heard some good chamber music.

What about his symphonies? No. 1 in C starts out in a surprisingly gentle, bucolic fashion; its musical language maybe evokes the Brahms Serenades rather than symphonies. The whole work follows in this gentle, friendly fashion, and although it may not rank (among pastoral romantic symphonies) alongside, say, Dvorak 5 or 6, or even Svendsen 2, it is exquisitely well-crafted. I appreciated a lot about the orchestration, tunefulness, and skillful development of tunes.

No. 2, in E flat, starts with a heroic French horn call; the intro reminds me of a horn-centric version of the start of Schumann's First. This, however, is not a slow introduction but rather the beginning of a slowish and epic-length first movement allegro which will boast an unusually long, interesting development section. We then get two intermezzo-like middle movements, neither of them really slow, though the first one does have tiny hints at a more lyrical, sweeping melody. The third movement is a minuet (!), with a trio livelier and louder than the outer portions. The finale reverts to the relaxed happiness of the First Symphony.

No. 3 has only been recorded by Leon Botstein, on another independent label. I'll probably seek it out at some point to be completist.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I love the stories written by ETA Hoffmann. I will check the recording!

[Florestan]

I've heard so much about E.T.A. Hoffmann as writer and inspiration for Schumann, Offenbach, etc. but this might be my first introduction to his actual music. The overtures are a pleasing mix of Weber and Rossini ("Das Kreuz an der Ostsee" quotes "Il signor Bruschino"), with a bit of obvious late Mozart too ("Der Trank der Unsterblichkeit").

The main course is the half-hour ballet Arlequin, which is more in the classical mold than the throughwritten style of Adolphe Adam a little bit later. I think the track titles are not ideally translated; one of them is called "Indicates That They Have Lost The Belt." Anyway, the ballet is completely wonderful fluff.

An hour of cheery fun light music.

Thanks for that, it should be right up my alley.

I have some other music by Hoffmann, including his complete piano sonatas, and it strikes me as too Classical for such an arch-Romantic writer. I mean, one would expect mad Kreisler to out-Beethoven Beethoven in rage and quirkiness, but that's not the case at all. Mild-mannered Classicism is the name of the game --- not that I dislike it but the difference between Hoffmann's prose and his music is striking.

[Jo498]

Yes, I have heard a symphony, a piano trio and a sacred choral work (Miserere?) by Hoffmann. The E flat major symphony is quite nice but heavily indebted to Mozart's #39, not unfitting, as Hoffmann did change his middle name to Amadeus in honor of Mozart.

I don't remember much about the choral piece, Hoffmann is on record for claiming that old quasi-palestrinian style would be the only real church style but this was obviously difficult to square with his admiration of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven who wrote rather different church music, but the piano trio is also closer to Hummel and early Beethoven than to middle Beethoven or early romanticism.

Hoffmann also wrote a moderately successful opera: Undine; I have never heard it and it seems to have been replaced during the later 19th century by Lortzing's rather light-popular treatment of a similar story and later by Dvorak's Rusalka.

[GoranTch]

I endorse your enthusiasm on Herzogenberg. His chamber music represents the summit of his art IMO. I'd also recommend the cello sonatas, piano quartets and some string quartets to anyone interested in exploring his music.

Fully agree with this, his best chamber music consists of, again, works which Brahms could have been rightfully proud of if he had composed them himself...

[GoranTch]

Joining the GMG crowd on this one and...yup. These are great. I own the CPO twofer disc of various Herzogenberg trios and quartets. Might need this one as well. Brahmsish, but not directly imitative. Highly communicative and emotional, but not sappy. Just really darn good romantic cello music. My sense is that the later sonatas are more small-scale, more for domestic playing, in contrast to the bigger First.

Yes, the First especially really is a major work, a true high point in the repertoire for the instrument.

[Brian]

Rontgen's Piano Concerto No. 3, in D minor and from the late 1880s, takes a straightforward romantic form. It's in four movements (with an allegretto added), about a half-hour, and starts with the piano declaiming a Brahmsian minor-key melody. This first movement is like a miniature version of the Brahms D minor concerto. The allegretto, by contrast, is a gentle, courtly dance with quite a bit of triangle. The slow Romanze is led by a long, graceful cello melody; if it was a solo cello, I'd think Rontgen was stealing from Brahms again. It's almost three minutes before the piano enters. The romance eventually segues straight into a gentle dancing rondo finale. It's almost like Rontgen fused the two Brahms concertos, then shrunk that combined colossus to one-third the size. Derivative? Yes. Exquisitely crafted, wonderfully played, unceasingly entertaining, and worthy of the style it copies? Also yes.

Concertos 6 and 7 are much smaller, only about 18 minutes each, the Sixth in one movement, the Seventh in three. (CPO's booklet misnames the three movements, copying and pasting the first three movement markings from the Third.) Amazingly, these "Siamese twin" concertos were written simultaneously in December 1929 and finished just six days apart.

No. 6, in E minor, starts with a very strange string melody, very much warning the listener that we've moved forward 40 years in time. (Unlike, say, Glazunov, Rontgen really did evolve. Not as much as someone like Stravinsky, but he didn't stay stuck in the 1880s until the end.) The fantasia-like structure bounces around through a variety of moods, tempos, and even musical languages. No surprise, maybe, that Rontgen eventually reverts to a more romantic mode of expression, complete with virtuoso cadenza. No. 7 has a jovial C major key but there are plenty of shadows through the second and third movements. There's also a neoclassical element to the outer movements, not fully Martinu but clearly someone inspired by Bach.

Interesting stuff! Triendl, as ever, is a mark of both adventure and quality.



Earlier in this thread I mentioned "Sinding's violin concerto"...I didn't realize there were three! This 2CD set begins with No. 3, probably because it has the catchiest opening. The orchestra sets out a catchy tune in heroic flight, then the violinist immediately enters to develop it. The slow movement has a vaguely Nordic-folkish character, but only very mild. The finale is just long enough and has a catchy, punchy ending. All three movements are concise, catchy, and full of violin pyrotechnics. (The piece is only 21 minutes long.) The concerto lacks the type of A-list Big Tune that puts a romantic concerto in the permanent repertoire, but it has everything else in spades. A great success, I'd say.

Two shortish pieces follow, a Legende and Romance, both pleasant. On the second disc, Suite im alten Stil is probably Sinding's most famous work? I've long had a violin and piano version on a Naxos CD.

Violin Concerto No. 1 starts with the same basic rhythm/idea as the finale of Bruch's same-name piece. It's a little surprising because I'm so used to this tune signaling an ending, not a beginning. The first movement is in jovial good humor, and Sinding was clearly proud of the ending, which modulates very dramatically into a minor key to set up the slow movement. Concerto No. 2 is the weakest of the three, I think, because it is the longest but it is not more interesting to justify its length.



Simon Le Duc was a French composer, 14 years older than Mozart, who died at a similar age (34 or 35). He left three symphonies and three "orchestral trios," written so that they could be scaled down for chamber music performance if necessary, and all six pieces fit on one CD. This CD has 'em all, in HIP performances. (Sometimes I can just barely hear a fortepiano continuo.)

These are transitional symphonies from the form's first days, but they offer lots of variety, quirks, and colorful orchestration. I like the roles of the horns in the symphonies. The playing is also excellent. If you appreciate, say, the first 15 or so Haydn symphonies, you should definitely hear this.



Kallstenius, a Swedish musical bureaucrat (librarian, copyright advocate, composers' board member), gained a reputation for somewhat stern, tough, modernist works that featured very small motifs treated rigorously. The booklet says he was even given the nickname Gallstonius! "He was an intellectual composer...his music is not always easy to follow." The booklet tries to make us afraid. Symphony No. 1 is described as "rugged and screeching." (It was premiered, inappropriately, in a pops concert between Schubert and Johann Strauss.) Perhaps afraid we won't like the Symphony, CPO has paired it with two lighter pieces, a Sinfonietta and the even less structured Musica Sinfonica (with folk music inspirations).

A century after its premiere, Symphony No. 1 doesn't sound so "screeching" anymore. It's not atonal honking, for example  However, the rigorous musical language, not made for easy listening, certainly makes it incredibly inappropriate for its original pops concert setting. I'd say it is a little tougher to digest and more academically rigorous than, say, late Wiren, and certainly moreso than anything by Atterberg. Though not as contrapuntal as Johann Nepomuk David, that is an okay comparison.

I actually found the two "lighter" pieces somewhat tougher, because they are in fact not that much lighter. Kallstenius found himself trapped between his impulse to be "light" and his inherent nature, and the result is kinda neither.

CPO's booklet translation is unusually full of errors and typos.