Schmidt reviews

Schmidt: Symphony No. 1 (BBC NOW/Berman)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Jonathan Berman (Accentus)
more

Schmidt: Symphonies Nos 1-4, etc

Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra/Paavo Järvi (DG)
more

Semyon Bychkov conducts the Vienna Philharmonic in a performance of Shmidt's Symphony No. 2 and R Strauss's Dreaming by the Fireside

Semyon Bychkov and the Vienna Philharmonic blitzed Proms regulars with the revelation of the 2015 season – a symphony by a little-known name that went beyond the usual boundaries of the late-Romantic style. Recordings tend to have favoured Austrian composer Franz Schmidt’s extraordinary apocalyptic cantata The Book of the Seven Seals – also a Proms hit in an earlier season – and the Fourth Symphony, but the Second is the one more likely to blow your mind.

more

Bychkov conducts Schmidt and R Strauss

'This golden performance will convince you Schmidt succeeds as a symphonist' - Read more...

 

Schmidt Symphony No. 2

R Strauss Dreaming by the Fireside

Vienna Philharmonic/Semyon Bychkov

Sony 88985355522

 

 

 

more

Simone Young conducts Schmidt's 'Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln'

What a bold and enterprising move on the part of Simone Young to present Franz Schmidt’s great if somewhat neglected oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals) for her final concert as music director at the Hamburg State Opera in June 2015. First heard in Vienna in 1938 only three months after the Nazis occupied Austria, it’s undoubtedly a work with some potentially uncomfortable historical baggage, particularly given its dramatic trajectory.

more

Schmidt: Symphony No. 4 in C

Composed in 1933 as a requiem for his only daughter, Emma, who had died in childbirth the year before, Franz Schmidt’s fourth and finest symphony was clearly also conceived as his own memorial. Already ailing from the heart disease that would kill him six years later, he was convinced that he wouldn’t live to complete it.

more

Schmidt: Symphony No. 2; Fuga Solemnis

 Best known today for his apocalyptic oratorio, The Book with Seven Seals, Franz Schmidt’s reputation has long been clouded by the Nazi salute he reportedly gave at its 1938 Viennese premiere, but Hans Keller, no less, called him ‘the most complete musician I have come across’. Naxos’s impressively developing series of his four symphonies will hopefully help a new, wider listenership hear why. 

more

Schmidt: Symphony No. 2; Fuga Solemnis

  Best known today for his apocalyptic oratorio, The Book with Seven Seals, Franz Schmidt’s reputation has long been clouded by the Nazi salute he reportedly gave at its 1938 Viennese premiere, but Hans Keller, no less, called him ‘the most complete musician I have come across’. Naxos’s impressively developing series of his four symphonies will hopefully help a new, wider listenership hear why. 

more

Schmidt: Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln

Was God – or at least the God of Franz Schmidt’s Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book with Seven Seals) – a Nazi? Certainly in giving the Hitler salute at his oratorio’s premiere, presented in Vienna’s Musikverein just three months after the Anschluss, and then embarking upon a celebratory sequel entitled Die deutsche Auferstehung (The German Resurrection), Schmidt seems to have been pinning his colours, however naively, to the Nazi mast.
more

Tveitt • Rautavaara • Alfvén • Sallinen, Nielsen • Ole Schmidt

This is an unusual collection of unfamiliar music, most of it noble and some of it quietly disturbing. The four terse, dark movements of Rautavaara’s Soldier’s Mass are a universe away from the mystical musings of his later symphonic works, and Sallinen’s early Chorali has a granitic quality that he has allowed to soften with the years. Nielsen’s tiny paraphrase on ‘Nearer My God to Thee’, inspired by the sinking of the Titanic, builds to a brief, shocking catastrophe where we glimpse the cataclysm of the Fifth Symphony.

more

Schmidt: String Quartet in A; String Quartet in G

Franz Schmidt’s two string quartets date from his full maturity, yet they are less individual achievements than his symphonies. Deeply, defiantly conservative in style, Classical in form and content, they extend with consummate musicianship the Austro-Hungarian quartet tradition as it had evolved from Schubert through Brahms, with nods at Schumann and Dvorák. Expansive four-movement designs (a shade under forty minutes each here), melodious and masterfully written for the medium, they’re distinguished works full of deep feeling but with little sense of adventure.
more

Schmidt: Symphony No. 4; Variations on a Hussar's Song

When Schmidt wrote his First Symphony in 1900, the modernist revolution in Vienna had just begun. Thirty-five years on, when Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony was premiered, it was more or less complete. But the whole thing seemed to pass Schmidt by. Both works hark back to an older, safer Vienna, when the symphony was a serious and sober thing, and sudden intrusions of cafe-songs and marches à la Mahler were not tolerated. The First is exuberant and sunny, and its extrovert nature is matched by Järvi’s performance. The sound is a bit coarse: it’s boomy without warmth, like a barman’s greeting.
more

Schmidt/Strauss

When Schmidt wrote his First Symphony in 1900, the modernist revolution in Vienna had just begun. Thirty-five years on, when Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony was premiered, it was more or less complete. But the whole thing seemed to pass Schmidt by. Both works hark back to an older, safer Vienna, when the symphony was a serious and sober thing, and sudden intrusions of cafe-songs and marches à la Mahler were not tolerated. The First is exuberant and sunny, and its extrovert nature is matched by Järvi’s performance. The sound is a bit coarse: it’s boomy without warmth, like a barman’s greeting.
more

Korngold, Schmidt

Music for one-handed piano is naturally less well-known than music involving both hands. But begin to explore the astonishing range of music commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein – the celebrated pianist who lost his right arm during World War I – and some unexpected gems emerge. The latest is Korngold’s Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left Hand, which has come to CD at last.
more

Mahler/Schmidt

Interests collide in this curious ‘Double Decca’. Mehta’s Resurrection is a direct way in for first-time Mahlerians – firmly paced (except in the Scherzo) and handsomely upholstered, with suitable gravitas from Ludwig; Schmidt’s last symphony is, frankly, for connoisseurs. Austerely Romantic and perfectly formed, this 1933 elegy seems to touch the hearts of the Viennese players as well as the (usually) effect-conscious Mehta; he has done nothing finer. Worth the price of the discs alone, though there’s much to enjoy in the Mahler. David Nice
more
This website is owned and published by Our Media Ltd. www.ourmedia.co.uk
© Our Media 2024