COMPOSERS: Goetz
LABELS: CPO
WORKS: Nenie; Psalm 137; Overture Francesca von Rimini; Frühlings-Ouvertüre
PERFORMER: Stephanie Stiller (soprano); NDR Choir, NDR Philharmonic/Werner Andreas Albert
CATALOGUE NO: 999 316-2
Warmly praised as an orchestral composer by Bernard Shaw, Hermann Goetz (1840-76) was also well known in Victorian times for his Shakespearean opera, The Taming of the Shrew. Here a bid for revived attention is offered in two choral and two orchestral works. Nenia (ie ‘Dirge’, on the same poem by Schiller that Brahms later set as Nänie) matches the solemnity and flow of the text, and the Spring overture likewise shows how much originality was accessible to the German tradition without a capitulation to Wagner. Werner Andreas Albert’s solid conducting persuades us that Goetz’s is a talent worth our acquaintance, though it is less brightly shining in the other two works (with Stefanie Stiller a limpid soloist in Psalm 137).
This short disc is acceptably but not brilliantly recorded. Arthur Jacobs