Griffiths

‘Under the conductor Howard Griffiths the OSI performed elegantly and just as brilliantly. In any event, a more convincing case could hardly be made for the music of Krommer, who is largely forgotten as a symphonist.’ This is what klassik-heute wrote of cpo’s release of the first three Krommer symphonies, and Vol. 2 now follows with his Symphonies Nos. 4, 5, and 7. Generally considered, No. 4 was Franz Krommer’s most successful symphony. If one terms it his ‘Dramatic Symphony’ because of its energetic forward motion, then ‘Festive Symphony’ is the title that suggests itself for No. 5. In No. 7 Krommer, to a certain extent, returns to the dramatic character of No. 4 but generates it in a manner that might be termed archaizing or historicizing.

Johann Wilhelm Wilms was once called the Dutch Beethoven. His works were extremely popular and were met with tremendous praise. However like contemporaries such as Eberl and Fesca, it became increasing difficult to compete with Beethoven and his works eventually fell into oblivion. This new release on CPO documents two of Wilms’s symphonies and the Overture in D major. Howard Griffiths and the NDR Radiophilharmonie give an inspired interpretation and demonstrate the accessibility of this composer’s music.

The Orpheum Foundation, which has been supporting young musicians for more than thirty years, has joined forces with Alpha Classics for a series of recordings devoted to Mozart’s concertos for various instruments. The finest soloists of the young generation have been selected under the artistic direction of Howard Griffiths, a renowned Mozart conductor, who considers that playing his music is like ‘looking in a mirror: you can hear if everything is in place, musicality, intonation, rhythm, phrasing’. For this fifth volume, the American pianist Claire Huangci joins the Mozarteum-Orchester Salzburg and Howard Griffiths, her mentor for the past ten years. For her, she says, these concertos are ‘true musical revelations, works full of virtuosity and imagination’.

As a composer of instrumental music, Louis Spohr was second only to Beethoven in the category of widespread attention and recognition during the first half of the nineteenth century. After Beethoven's death in 1827 he was regarded by large segments of the music public as the greatest living composer. In 1828 the leading music critic Friedrich Rochlitz asked very rhetorically, 'Who else should now write symphonies?' Spohr was supposed to continue what Beethoven had begun. However, even then Spohr's symphonic music was recognized as the absolute opposite of the type of the Beethovian symphony. If genial musical license holds sway in Beethoven's oeuvre, then in Spohr classical order prevails.