Colecao Amanda Aplique No.4

If you have not heard of Amanda Maier (1853-1894), you are not alone. A celebrated violin soloist and composer during her lifetime, Maier was all but forgotten in death. (This was a common, if unjust fate among women musicians, who were largely ignored by music scholars for most of the twentieth century.) Today, however, Maier’s popularity is making a comeback, and rightfully so! Researchers and performers, predominantly in Sweden and the Netherlands, have become enamored with Maier, resulting in new publications and performances of her music, and renewed efforts to find her lost manuscripts. There have been only a few performances of her works in North America, where Maier remains a relative unknown.

SOMM Recordings honours Franz Schmidt, one of the great symphonic composers of the 20th century, on the 150th anniversary of his birth with this double-disc set featuring two of his masterworks. Revered in his day in his native Austria as the nation’s leading composer and an elite teacher, cellist and pianist, his name will not be known to many. This is due, at least in part, to a perceived association with the Third Reich (against which there is ample evidence). This first release on CD of two premiere recordings, meticulously produced and restored by Lani Spahr, showcases Schmidt’s unique harmonic language, exceptional contrapuntal skill and mastery of form, qualities which prompted Hans Pfitzner to call Schmidt’s Symphony No. 4 “nearer perfection than Bruckner, more honest than Richard Strauss and more original than Reger”.

Takashi Asahina was a Japanese conductor. He founded the Kansai Symphonic Orchestra (today the Osaka Philharmonic Orchestra) in 1947 and remained its chief conductor until his death in Kobe. Inspired by a meeting with Wilhelm Furtwängler in the 1950s, he began a lifelong attachment to the music of Anton Bruckner, recording the complete Bruckner symphonies several times. Presented here, the Fourth Symphony 'Romantic', have been recorded shortly before his death.

Nielsen’s epic Violin Concerto was premiered in Copenhagen in February 1912, by violinist Peder Moller. Nominally the work is set in two movements; both open with a slow section and move to a faster one. Whilst unusual, this could be seen as a more usual fast – slow – fast three movement form, but with an extensive slow introduction to the first movement. The music moves quickly from one idea to the next, and overall has a bold, playful and optimistic feel.

Born and raised in Vienna, Josef Krips trained as a choirboy and studied with Felix Weingartner, who then hired him as a repetiteur at the Volksoper. He his debut there in 1921, before graduating to the Vienna State Opera in 1933. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it was Krips above all who reformed and re-trained the State Opera as a world-class ensemble, and in the most difficult conditions. His pragmatism and understated authority made him a model recording conductor, and Decca hired him to work with orchestras in several of their centres of activity.