Ries: Concert Overtures

Howard Griffiths, WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln - Ferdinand Ries: Concert Overtures (2011) Music

Posted by ArlegZ at Oct. 10, 2024

The composer Ries, born in Bonn, Germany, will not be known to many nowadays, yet he had been London-based, had an English wife and wrote a number of overtures for the Philharmonic Society to perform. The concert 'ouvertures', as such, had been invented by Romberg, Spohr and Schneider. Previously, the regular concert hall practice of starting an evening with a single movement of a symphony was felt too severe an introduction for the audiences. Consequently, lighter pieces were introduced with stronger melodic line and easier on the ear to endear the audience and encourage their focus.

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WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln - Ries: Concert Overtures (2011) Music

Posted by varrock at April 18, 2019

WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln - Ries: Concert Overtures (2011)
WEB FLAC (tracks) - 220 MB | Tracks: 6 | 59:10 min
Style: Classical | Label: CPO

This is a lovely program of exciting, colorful music. Ferdinand Ries may not have been a great composer in large forms, such as symphonies and concertos, but these single-movement pieces give him the opportunity to use his imagination, and he takes full advantage. The Ouverture bardique, for example, asks for six harps (though it sounds more like two here, since there are only two individual parts), and employs a Welsh folk theme. Both The Bride of Messina and Don Carlos (plays by Schiller) are suitably dramatic, and full of fire. Ries loads his Victory March with brass and percussion, but the music's high kick is buoyant rather than pompous. The dramatic overture "L'Apparition" was Ries' final orchestral work, and it seems to foretell the Mendelssohn of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

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