Max Reger(1873-1916)

[Mirror Image]

I could agree that Reger's music is often overdone in many ways, overspiced, overly complex, overly long etc. But plush and saccharine would be among the very last attributes I could think of to describe Reger. It's more like dark meat that is still not tender even after having been cooked forever with darker gravy, cabbage and heavy dumplings

Well, you've managed to ruin dark meat, cabbage and dumplings for me. Thanks a lot, jerk!

[kyjo]

I have been listening to the recently maligned Reger Piano Concerto, performed by Gerhard Oppitz with the Bamberger Sym conducted by Horst Stein.

I had not taken this off the shelf in many years; I usually listen to chamber music when I listen to Reger. In my memory it was a very full and busy piece, but I'm not hearing any congestion now. It was composed and premiered in 1910, so formally it is a later work. Oppitz, Stein and the people at Koch Schwann have kept the textures open. The concerto was conceived for a female pianist, a pupil of Reger's, maybe that's part of it. There are big chords, sure, but the work does not rely on power. Also, there are no cadenzas.

There is a center of deep roiling agitation in this piece, but peace, too, as is shown by the relative brevity of the development section in the 18 minute first movement. The coda of the first mvt is just amazing.

The slow movement is one of those gorgeous prayer-like largos Reger wrote in his later years, with long melodic lines going from  ppp to crescendo and back to ppp. I remember how I used to love this music when I was a young man, 45 years ago, listening to the Rudolf Serkin / Ormandy recording. And I still am awestruck at this music. This combination of the sacred and the profane (the jolly finale) is unique to Max Reger. The finale is truly amazing in that it is a full orchestra plus piano playing chrystal clear chamber music.

I'm not going to put this back on the Reger shelf but listen to this piece some more in the rest of the week.

Your enthusiasm has encouraged me to put the Reger PC on my "need to listen" list. It certainly seems to be a piece that divides opinion!

[vers la flamme]

I really want to explore more of Reger's music. All I've heard is some of the organ music (which is quite mind blowing, but I really have to be in the mood to hear it) plus two sets of orchestral variations on Naxos (I could take it or leave it, but I suspect it's not a great performance—I've never been super impressed with the NZ Symphony).

What's a good single disc to start with for his chamber music?

[Herman]

there's a good naxos disc with the clarinet quintet + the string quartet nr 4, perhaps his two most succesful chamber works.

another option would be the violin sonatas op 122 & 139.

[Herman]

I have been listening to the recently maligned Reger Piano Concerto, performed by Gerhard Oppitz with the Bamberger Sym conducted by Horst Stein.

I had not taken this off the shelf in many years; I usually listen to chamber music when I listen to Reger. In my memory it was a very full and busy piece, but I'm not hearing any congestion now. It was composed and premiered in 1910, so formally it is a later work. Oppitz, Stein and the people at Koch Schwann have kept the textures open. The concerto was conceived for a female pianist, a pupil of Reger's, maybe that's part of it. There are big chords, sure, but the work does not rely on power. Also, there are no cadenzas.

There is a center of deep roiling agitation in this piece, but peace, too, as is shown by the relative brevity of the development section in the 18 minute first movement. The coda of the first mvt is just amazing.

The slow movement is one of those gorgeous prayer-like largos Reger wrote in his later years, with long melodic lines going from  ppp to crescendo and back to ppp. I remember how I used to love this music when I was a young man, 45 years ago, listening to the Rudolf Serkin / Ormandy recording. And I still am awestruck at this music. This combination of the sacred and the profane (the jolly finale) is unique to Max Reger. The finale is truly amazing in that it is a full orchestra plus piano playing chrystal clear chamber music.

I'm not going to put this back on the Reger shelf but listen to this piece some more in the rest of the week.

Since I am still listening to the Piano Concerto, with much pleasure (this is really a terrific recording), I'd like to add that one of the features of this concerto is its particular sound world. There's a roiling darkness to it, coming out of stopped brass and violas and celli, right out of the gate.

In the wonderful largo the whole sound spectrum shifts upward, there are much more highs. However in the busy middle part the entire sound picture gets pulled down again towards the dark, with a nagging motiv that at its most intriguing gets picked up by a horn near the end of the climax (in bar 54) as a sort of signal for the piano and then the peaceful music returns. That horn signal, coloring the entire proceedings, is (for me) characteristic of the way this symphonic piano concerto sounds.

[Mahlerian]

I really want to explore more of Reger's music. All I've heard is some of the organ music (which is quite mind blowing, but I really have to be in the mood to hear it) plus two sets of orchestral variations on Naxos (I could take it or leave it, but I suspect it's not a great performance—I've never been super impressed with the NZ Symphony).

What's a good single disc to start with for his chamber music?

I second Herman's recommendation of the Naxos disc with his Clarinet Quintet, which is one of his best single works.

His two piano trios are also a good introduction to Reger, early and late:


Most people don't love the Op. 54 quartets as much as I do, but they're very inventive:

[Jo498]

The Naxos chamber CD is very good. Even more appealing might be Hamelin (Hyperion) with the two big variation cycles for piano solo. If one likes Brahms' Handel- and Haydn-Variations, one should try the ones by Reger. I think the most "picturesquely romantic" orchestral pieces are the "Böcklin" Tone poems (incl. an "Isle of the Dead"). If one loves cello, the cello solo suites could also be an option.

[André]

I love the solo violin sonatas (two sets, op 42 and 91). Superb. So are the two-piano works.





I find the Mozart and Beethoven variation sets even better in this format than in their orchestral versions (the Mozart set was composed for orchestra and transcribed for two pianos. The Beethoven set was for two pianos and transcribed for orchestra).

[Mirror Image]

I love the solo violin sonatas (two sets, op 42 and 91. Superb. So are the two-piano works.

What are some Reger works that you don't like, Andre? I'm trying to figure out if you're a Reger fanboy who feels he can do no wrong or actually have some kind of criticism about his music. As much as I love say Shostakovich or Sibelius, I feel there are many works that just don't do much for me.

[André]

If the music is good, it's good, John. No need to be a fanboy (what a silly term).

[Mirror Image]

If the music is good, it's good, John. No need to be a fanboy (what a silly term).

I'm just trying to figure out what works you dislike from Reger. Also, I can't claim the term 'fanboy' as it's been around for quite some time.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fanboy

[Maestro267]

Nothing about "claiming" it at all. It's a derogatory term that should be removed from our vocabulary. No gatekeeping here. Everyone's enthusiasm is welcome here, no matter how much experience one has with this music, or any composer's music.

[Herman]

Maybe I can respond to the 'dislike' question.

I'm not too hot about the large solo works in which Reger doesn't check his facility in spinning notes.

So, the big op. 81 Bach variations are not my thing. Nor do I have a lot of succes with the solo violin sonatas as recorded by the wonderful Ulrike-Anima Mathé. It's just so many notes. I have the complete Ulf Wallin set, but the two violin - piano sonatas op 122 and op 139 suffice for me. They are great pieces that deserve to be performed in recitals more. Same for the three Suites for solo viola op 131. These are works of artistic heroism to me, in the way Reger has conquered his facility and has found restraint.

In the Reger literature people talk of his last years (the Jena era) when he was looking for a more Mozartian openness in his sound, culminating in the Clarinet Quintet, but it's there already in the Piano concerto from 1910. For me the big Piano Trio op 102 is the starting point of the good stuff. The works with the double (rather than triple) opus numbers often suffer (in my mind) from too thick textures and a habit of just going on and on. One cannot help but think what great chamber works he could have composed had he eaten a little less and lived a little longer, so that there would have been more works from the Jena era.

I have great respect for the craftsman type artist who doesn't wait for inspiration but finds it while he's working. Bach, Reger, Hindemith, in the German music tradition. However that attitude means you have a great many opus nrs and people will need to shift when the dust has settled.

[SurprisedByBeauty]

Max Reger also wrote an incredibly moving* love letter to the woman he had adored and courted for 7 years before, now a widow by now divorced, he tried again. (And succeeded.)

If you speak German and are interested in it al all (but too lazy to google it), here's me reading it, set to his music.

https://surprisedbybeautyorg.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/the_quarantine_poems_no10_max-reger_werbungsbrief-an-seine-frau_2.mp3

(* Especially if you leave out his detailed listing of his finances.)

[Herman]

Elsa was not a widow when she and Reger married; she had divorced her first husband, a most unusual step at the time. She had taken voice lessons with Reger. He probably composed a lot of songs with her voice in mind.

When they married at long last, in 1902, he was excommunicated from the catholic church; Elsa was a protestant and and a divorced woman. Marrying Reger was a bit of a step down, socially, for her, her dad was a 'von' and her mother was a baroness.

They adopted two daughters (she was over thirty when they married) and when she (at last) became a widow after Reger had eaten and drank himself to death* thirteen years later she kept his name alive by running the Max-Reger-Institute, with enormous archives and funds to sponsor Reger projects, such as the biography that appeared a couple years ago. I wouldn't be suprised if the large cd boxes of his works that keep appearing aren't part-sponsored by the Institute, too.

*I know people weren't saying "cheese" for the camera back in 1910, but still, in the pictures we have of the Regers big and small they do not look exuberantly happy, to put it mildly.

[Mirror Image]

Maybe I can respond to the 'dislike' question.

I'm not too hot about the large solo works in which Reger doesn't check his facility in spinning notes.

So, the big op. 81 Bach variations are not my thing. Nor do I have a lot of succes with the solo violin sonatas as recorded by the wonderful Ulrike-Anima Mathé. It's just so many notes. I have the complete Ulf Wallin set, but the two violin - piano sonatas op 122 and op 139 suffice for me. They are great pieces that deserve to be performed in recitals more. Same for the three Suites for solo viola op 131. These are works of artistic heroism to me, in the way Reger has conquered his facility and has found restraint.

In the Reger literature people talk of his last years (the Jena era) when he was looking for a more Mozartian openness in his sound, culminating in the Clarinet Quintet, but it's there already in the Piano concerto from 1910. For me the big Piano Trio op 102 is the starting point of the good stuff. The works with the double (rather than triple) opus numbers often suffer (in my mind) from too thick textures and a habit of just going on and on. One cannot help but think what great chamber works he could have composed had he eaten a little less and lived a little longer, so that there would have been more works from the Jena era.

I have great respect for the craftsman type artist who doesn't wait for inspiration but finds it while he's working. Bach, Reger, Hindemith, in the German music tradition. However that attitude means you have a great many opus nrs and people will need to shift when the dust has settled.

Thanks for answering my question (even though I didn't ask you ). All I get is attitude and overly sensitive replies from other members if I dare question their enthusiasms. I'll have to check out some of the later works as you suggested.

[Mirror Image]

I want apologize to Andre if my comments were seen as rude or abrasive. This wasn't my intention at all. Sorry, my friend! I write similar to the way I talk, so without being able to see my body language, I can understand how my posts sometimes come off sounding discourteous.

[André]

No harm done, John  .

I must admit I do love a lot of Reger.

[Herman]

Yeah, I think it's fun the way Andre and I are both (apparently) 'Reger fanboys' with not a whole lot of overlap.

I'm listening to the BRSO Hiller Variations now, btw, yet another example of Reger swinging between the sacred and profane.

[Mirror Image]

No harm done, John  .

I must admit I do love a lot of Reger.

Good to read, Andre. I should try and get back into the composer, because I own a good bit of his music.