Ernst

Following the label's previous release of Fesca’s Septets opp. 26 and 28 (9996172) CPO are now releasing two of his six Piano Trios. The Piano Trio No. 5 composed in Braunschweig in 1845 merits special mention here: a truly appealing work, winning audiences with its wealth of beautiful melodies.

Spohr wrote 15 violin concertos, the first completed in 1803 and the last in 1844. The best known of these is probably No. 8, which incorporates an operatic element. Other concertos include two double violin concertos and four concertos for clarinet. The latter are an important and popular part of solo clarinet repertoire and were written for the clarinettist Johann Simon Hermstedt.

Spohr wrote 15 violin concertos, the first completed in 1803 and the last in 1844. The best known of these is probably No. 8, which incorporates an operatic element. Other concertos include two double violin concertos and four concertos for clarinet. The latter are an important and popular part of solo clarinet repertoire and were written for the clarinettist Johann Simon Hermstedt.

There’s little if anything by this composer in the current CD catalog, and this recording makes a welcome addition. Among the few contemporary references to Alexander Fesca (1820-49) is one from Robert Schumann, who wrote a short article on some of the composer’s youthful piano pieces for his journal, Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1840. For what it’s worth, Schumann described these as “a glimpse into a rich if not yet controlled musical mind”, though a year later he despaired of Fesca’s capabilities and wrote, “if he continues to indulge his own aspirations, we must regard him as lost.” Fesca probably would have been lost, too, were it not for enterprising discs such as this, which includes direct and convincing performances of his two septets.

Johann Strauss Junior’s second operetta, Der Carneval in Rom, premiered in 1873 only one year before Die Fledermaus, and while the music is enjoyable enough, with several nice tunes, there is little in the score to presage the gorilla blockbuster soon to come. For one thing, Strauss wrote the music in the more romantic style of light opera because the work was originally scheduled to be mounted at the Vienna court opera, a place of more serious mien than the Theater an der Wien, then the home of the comic-oriented Viennese operetta.

Violin virtuoso and composer Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst was well known to audiences and musicians in the middle of the 19th century. At first he was a slavish follower of Paganini, whom he followed from place to place; often, by listening to the Italian master, he was able to reproduce his new works before they had been published or disseminated. But there is a kind of elegant artistry in some of his music that displays his own personality, and Joseph Joachim, the violinist most closely associated with the Beethoven/Brahms line of musical thinking, called Ernst the greatest violinist he had ever heard.

A fascinating production of La Traviata formed year's opera highlight at one of Europe's most important open-air festivals: the Opera Festival St. Margarethen. The dazzling production, set in a rustically romantic Roman quarry, already boasts 100,000 visitors this season. Recorded live in July 2008, this DVD captures the beauty of the open-air production. Stage designer Manfred Waba sets the tragic story about the demi-mondaine Violetta Valery and her admirer Alfredo Germont in an evocative replica of the Parisian Opera Garnier. His and Robert Herzl's unique interpretation is intelligent and effective.

During the four years that separated Alexander Zemlinsky's Symphony in D minor and the premiere of the Symphony in B flat major (his first two efforts in the genre, aside from an incomplete work penned during his student years), the young composer had caught the eye and the fancy of the Viennese musical world. "The work's fresh, original ideas and genuinely exalted, youthful fire made a great impression on the audience and unleashed an intense salvo of applause," wrote one critic in response to the 1896 premiere of Zemlinsky's Waldegespräch (for soprano and chamber ensemble). These years also saw Zemlinsky winning two prestigious awards, the Luitpold Prize and the Beethoven Prize. His compositional skills had been refined during the mid 1890s as well. The Suite for Orchestra from 1895, for example, gave Zemlinsky an opportunity to create more adventurous orchestral colors than had been found in the admirable but conservative D minor Symphony. Thus, when one compares the B flat Symphony to his earlier symphonic effort, one notices that, while the same amalgamation of influences and styles is represented, more of the composer's own voice comes through – prompting one observer to suggest two different ways of looking at the work: "either as Zemlinsky's last early work or his first mature one."