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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Franz Schmidt's Symphony no. 1 dates from around 1900 and has a powerfully appealing freshness. It looks back occasionally to Mendelssohn and Weber, has some strong echoes of Bruckner, and hints of Richard Strauss. If you love any of these composers, you will enjoy this symphony. The first movement is richly gorgeous, the slow movement has a heart-melting passage for the horn section, the scherzo starts with a Brucknerian echo, and the finale has a glorious blazing chorale passage which could be called neo-Bruckner. Sinaisky's Malmö orchestra plays with more sensitivity and sensuality (especially in the woodwind section) than the Detroit Symphony Orchestra manages for Järvi, though Järvi's somewhat cruder performance is more full-blooded and high-voltage. Sinaisky, with a lighter touch than Järvi, makes the music point backwards to Weber rather than forwards to Schmidt's later music. The Notre Dame excerpts are also finely done. Strongly recommended, and a very fine (and inexpensive!) introduction to Schmidt's music.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This CD is a marvellous bargain. It provides any serious music-lover unfamiliar with Schmidt's consistently wonderful music (of whom there are still far too many) with a relatively easy and thoroughly delightful introduction to it. The First Symphony and the excerpts from Schmidt's first opera, "Notre Dame", are in his earliest vein - melodious and colourful in both harmony and orchestration (and already masterly in technique).
Had Schmidt really been anything like the hopelessly conservative, nostalgic composer his detractors often mistakenly claim him to be, he could easily have sustained an entire career by continuing to mine this rich seam. (The immensely sophisticated Second Symphony - composed less than a decade after the opera, and now also available on Naxos - shows just how quickly he developed and how far he progressed in a short space of time.) However, it is worth noting that even in the First Symphony - the first large-scale work of his that he deemed worthy of preservation - the harmony, texture and orchestration are actually far more complex than the melodiousness of the music might suggest to the casual listener. You will be reminded of both Bruckner and Strauss (especially the Seventh Symphony of the former and "Don Juan" by the latter) and you may even catch a whiff of Mahler (despite the mutual antipathy of the two composers), but such specific reminiscences are combined not only with neo-baroque and neo-classical elements (unusual for a work composed in the late 1890s!); they are also integrated into what is already a strong and unmistakably individual style.
This CD would be worth having at the price, even if the performances were indifferent and the sound rather poor, but they are not. The release of Schmidt's symphonies on Naxos (since we may reasonably expect the Third and Fourth to follow) is an important event, and one which will surely help to popularise these key works by a composer who, where he is known at all, is both poorly understood and criminally under-rated. Do not miss an inexpensive opportunity to become acquainted with a master symphonist.
Had Schmidt really been anything like the hopelessly conservative, nostalgic composer his detractors often mistakenly claim him to be, he could easily have sustained an entire career by continuing to mine this rich seam. (The immensely sophisticated Second Symphony - composed less than a decade after the opera, and now also available on Naxos - shows just how quickly he developed and how far he progressed in a short space of time.) However, it is worth noting that even in the First Symphony - the first large-scale work of his that he deemed worthy of preservation - the harmony, texture and orchestration are actually far more complex than the melodiousness of the music might suggest to the casual listener. You will be reminded of both Bruckner and Strauss (especially the Seventh Symphony of the former and "Don Juan" by the latter) and you may even catch a whiff of Mahler (despite the mutual antipathy of the two composers), but such specific reminiscences are combined not only with neo-baroque and neo-classical elements (unusual for a work composed in the late 1890s!); they are also integrated into what is already a strong and unmistakably individual style.
This CD would be worth having at the price, even if the performances were indifferent and the sound rather poor, but they are not. The release of Schmidt's symphonies on Naxos (since we may reasonably expect the Third and Fourth to follow) is an important event, and one which will surely help to popularise these key works by a composer who, where he is known at all, is both poorly understood and criminally under-rated. Do not miss an inexpensive opportunity to become acquainted with a master symphonist.
Format:Audio CD
..... isn't this glorious symphony ever programmed on the South bank or elsewhere? Schmidt needs a champion conductor to show those who love Strauss and Bruckner that there is life beyond Don Juan and Wagner adoration. This is a life-affirming, traditional work which is expertly - and lushly - orchestrated, with noblimente themes and taut, fully thought-through symphonic structure, leading inexorably to a glowing and heartfelt finale. On all fronts this music speaks eloquently. When played like this - with tremendous conviction and passion - one is aghast at its almost complete neglect! Give it a try: you won't be disappointed!
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