Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music

Richard Wagner and Pyotr Ill'yich Tchaikovsky: these two composers seem to represent two musical extremes on the one CD, with their only connection being the orchestra and the conductor who here perform their works. Wagner had proclaimed himself as the saviour of German Romantic music, the master who would raise opera and its performance to a higher level; Tchaikovsky was a tormented Russian Romantic composer who was considered to be too focused on Italian music to be truly Russian and yet whose music was regarded as being too Russian to ever sound truly European…

Anyone interested in Romantic music will inevitably come across the name Carl Reinecke. Countless aspiring composers from Germany and Scandinavia went to him to learn their craft. To those who wanted to make it in the city of the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra, he was an institution. Reinecke the composer enjoyed great success during his lifetime. However, as a preservationist of musical traditions, he was quickly forgotten after his death. The inevitable course of musical development swept him out of the way. This was not due to the quality of his music. Not only does his compositional technique stand up to scrutiny, but also his music as a sonic experience. This is particularly true of his three symphonies, all of which are now available in our catalogue with the release of the powerful Second in C minor.