Ernst Vschubert

By all accounts, Ernst Eichner was a distinguished if somewhat disreputable musician in his day. His life and catalogue of employers is given in some detail in Johannes Sturm’s booklet notes for this release. A possible indicator of this renown is the appropriation of the two Harp Concerti Op. 5 as being by Ernst by Amsterdam publisher Johann Julius Hummel, when in fact they are by the ‘otherwise unknown’ Jean Théophile Eichner. This may or may not have been the result of inefficient confusion rather than intentional forgery, but in any case Ernst was the default Eichner as far as the publisher of these works was concerned, and publishers are keen to turn a profit if nothing else.

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1812–65) was one of the leading musicians of his day, a friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn, and for Joseph Joachim ‘the greatest violinist I ever heard’. This sixth album – in a series of seven presenting all his compositions for the first time – begins and ends with some of the most difficult music for solo violin ever composed: Ernst’s Six Polyphonic Studies and his transcription of Schubert’s song, Der Erlkönig. Between them comes less familiar fare: five Schubertian piano pieces, and two settings of Goethe.

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1812–65) was one of the leading musicians of his day, a friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn, and for Joseph Joachim ‘the greatest violinist I ever heard’. But the popular encore pieces by which Ernst is remembered today represent only a fraction of his output. This second CD – in a series of six presenting his complete violin works for the first time – combines brilliant display and expressive melody: the Otello Fantasy and Rossini Variations show Ernst developing Paganini’s inheritance, and the Boléro, Two Romances and Pensées fugitives show why he was such a favourite in Parisian salons.

This disc by Polish label CD Accord takes the listener on a non-chronological journey along the highways and byways of fugal history. 'The Art of Fugue' once again proves irresistible as a title, but as a musical form at least the fugue offers plenty of diversity and much scope for a composer's imagination. Many of the items in the programme are, to be sure, movements from larger works or arrangements, but the NFM Wroclaw Chamber Orchestra, a subset of the Witold Lutoslawski Philharmonic, has a dark-roasted expressive sound that brings out both the variety and detail in all these pieces.

The classical period was one of those moments in history where the style itself was so powerful that composers of relatively modest ability, with a little luck and few good ideas, could write some outstanding music. Ernst Wilhelm Wolf’s Symphony in F is an excellent example of this phenomenon. A resident composer active in Weimar, Wolf (1732-92) composed about 35 symphonies, of which 26 survive. Like Handel’s organ concertos, they were written primarily for use as overtures and intermezzos during theatrical productions, and the short D major symphony, with trumpets and drums, clearly gives evidence of this provenance. The other three works, whether in three or four movements, are larger in scale, and certainly are rich enough in content to warrant an independent concert life.

Seine Zeitgenossen nannten ihn den Weimarer Wolf. Tatsächlich prägte Ernst Wilhelm Wolf als Lehrer, Konzertmeister, Organist und schließlich auch als Hofkapellmeister der kunstsinnigen Herzogin Anna Amalia das Musikleben in Weimar. Auch wenn er dem Dichterfürsten Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ein Dorn im Auge war, hielt Wolf dem Hof und seiner Herzogin jahrzehntelang die Treue. Selbst ein Angebot des Preußenkönigs Friedrich des Zweiten, in Berlin Nachfolger von Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach zu werden, lehnte Wolf dankend ab. Dass er aber Bachs empfindsamen Stil, und auch den des Berliner Kapellmeisters Carl Heinrich Graun sehr schätzte, ist in seinen Werken unüberhörbar. Wolfs Instrumentalmusik hat schon in den letzten Jahren wieder mehr Aufmerksamkeit erhalten.