Help for Heroes: Matthew Rye enjoys a disc of orchestral rarities but is unconvinced by an act of vocal heroism
Help for Heroes: Matthew Rye enjoys a disc of orchestral rarities but is unconvinced by an act of vocal heroism
Reviews of Symphony in C major, Symphony in E major (orch. Mottl), Huldigungsmarsch, Overture to Rienzi, Kaisermarsch, conducted Järvi (Chandos, 1 hybrid SACD); Helden: Wagner ‘Winterstürme wichen dem Wonnemond’ (Die Walküre), Prelude to Act III & ‘In fernem Land’ (Lohengrin), Prelude to Act III & ‘Morgenlich leuchtend im rosigen Schein’ (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Weber ‘Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen’ (Der Freischütz), Overture & ‘Ich juble in Glück und Hoffnung neu’ (Oberon), Mozart ‘Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön’ (Die Zauberflöte), Lortzing ‘Lebe wohl, mein flandrisch Mädchen’ (Zar und Zimmermann), Flotow, ‘Ach so fromm, ach so traut’ (Martha), Korngold, ‘Glück, das mir verblieb’ (Die tote Stadt), tenor Klaus Florian Vogt, soprano Manuela Uhl, conducted Schneider (Sony Classical, 1 CD).
July 2012, Volume 6, Number 2, 88–9.
After bringing us Henk de Vlieger’s masterly orchestral encapsulations of Wagner’s greatest music dramas, Neeme Järvi now provides a supplement with some relative rarities from the composer’s own orchestral output. The main course is his one completed Symphony, the work in C major written in 1832 when under the spell of Beethoven, who, it must be remembered, had died a mere five years earlier. His idol’s own symphonies were an obvious influence, but so was Fidelio, whose forthright optimism seems to lie at the heart of the first movement’s triumphant, triadic main theme, while in the finale, there’s even a surprising echo/pre-echo of the motoric rhythms in Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major, though of course that work wasn’t to be heard publicly for some time to come. The Symphony in E major, a two-movement torso from a couple of years further on and later orchestrated by Felix Mottl, came to light only in the 1980s, and takes us just a little further out of Wagner’s early Classicism.