Hermann Wayl

Leopold Anton Kozeluch, often inaccurately and unjustly portrayed as a scheming opponent of Mozart and Haydn, was actually an extraordinarily popular and successful composer during his own lifetime. Already in 1781 Kozeluch had such an outstanding reputation that the Salzburg archbishop offered him the court organist's post left vacant by Mozart. The Bohemian composer's some 250 works include symphonies, piano music, operas, cantatas, string quartets, and a number of oratorios. Moses in Egypt, an oratorio based on the Book of Exodus from the Old Testament, was premiered in the old Burgtheater in 1787.

Josef Bohuslav Foerster's life spanned almost an entire century. In the year of his birth, Wagner laid the axe to the roots of tonality with "Tristan"; shortly after his death, Boulez did the rest… Hermann Bäumer and the Osnabrück Symphony Orchestra have documented Foerster's symphonic output on three albums. This commendable edition shows a master who was highly respected during his lifetime and who remained true to himself through all the upheavals. Raised in Prague, Foerster spent many years in Hamburg and Vienna and only returned to his homeland after the founding of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and Grieg encouraged him in his younger years, and later Gustav Mahler sought his advice.

Neither Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Third Symphony of 1894 nor his Fourth Symphony of 1924 could be considered ahead of their time. Indeed, they are barely of their time. His Third has much of heroic middle period Dvorák and Brahms in it while his Fourth, the "Easter Eve" symphony, mixes the weight of late Bruckner with the expressivity of middle period Mahler. But whatever their time, they could and should be considered as vital works in their own right written by a talented, sincere, and distinctive composer.

When he is remembered at all, Josef Bohuslav Foerster is remembered for one of two things: that he was the first person Mahler confided in when he finally figured out how to end his "Resurrection" Symphony in C minor or that he was the composer who wrote the conspicuously Mahlerian "Easter Eve" Symphony in C minor. As this Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm disc demonstrates, however, there was more to Foerster than that. These world-premiere recordings of the Czech composer's First Symphony in D minor and Second Symphony in F major with Hermann Bäumer leading the Osnabrück Symphony Orchestra show that before he was writing like Mahler, Foerster was writing like Wagner.

Last year’s Magdeburg Festival Days were marked by an extraordinary event: the revival of Telemann’s last known extant passion composition, the St. Luke Passion of 1748, by the Rheinische Kantorei and the Kleines Konzert under Hermann Max. In the mid-nineteenth century the autograph made its way to Berlin, where it today is preserved as the only source for this composition. The historical edition was prepared especially for the modern repeat performance in Magdeburg. Every four years Telemann returned to the same passion narrative, always employing the language of music to occupy himself in new ways with the gospel message of each of the four evangelists.

The Glière is the most ambitious work here, running for nearly 23 minutes, almost a record length for a horn concerto. It is very florid and romantic—its unlikely model is Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, to which it comes nearest in the finale which is a lively Russian dance. Although some of the material is ingenuous, notably the march rhythm of the first movement, it is quite a jolly piece and has much in common with the Richard Strauss concertos. Otherwise the best known work is the Dukas Villanelle which Dennis Brain liked to play, and which is attractively diverse in mood and style, although essentially a miniature.

Today it is the Passions of J.S Bach which are most commonly known. The Passion Oratorio by J.S Bach’s nephew, godson and pupil Johann Ernst Bach is lesser known. On this Capriccio re-release his Passion Oratorio is performed alongside an Ode on the 77th Psalm for tenor, chorus and orchestra and a Motet for solo voices, four-part chorus, strings and continuo.

In an age of artistic conformity, Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679-1745) had a refreshingly individual voice. In his own time he was described as 'a reserved, bigoted Catholic, but also a respectable, quiet, unassuming man, deserving of the greatest respect'. His music earned Bach's respect for its serious contrapuntal procedures; today's listeners, though, are more immediately charmed by Zelenka's quirky turns of phrase and flashes of original genius. There are plenty of these in the Passion oratorio Gesù al Calvario (1735), one of the composer's three late oratorios.

'I am an EU singer', Hermann Prey always said about himself. However, by that he did not mean so much his citizenship of a European Union country as the fact that he felt at home in the fields of 'E' and 'U', i.e. in 'serious' and entertainment music alike. For Prey, this distinction never existed, but only the issue of the quality of music, and he found this not only in opera and Lied, but also in operetta, the musical and the well-made hit. For forty-six years Prey convinced audiences; this five-disc collection reveals his fascinatingly wide-ranging repertoire and interpretative skill.

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) der als Wunderkind von sieben Jahren Meisterschüler Mozarts, 1804 noch unter Haydn Konzertmeister im Schloß Eszterhazy wurde und sein Leben als Kapellmeister in Weimar beendete, ist heute vor allem durch sein berühmtes Trompetenkonzert bekannt. Sein umfangreiches Schaffen ist leider fast völlig vergessen, auch wenn insbesondere seine damals regelrecht avantgardistischen Klavierkonzerte und Teile seiner Kammermusik seit einiger Zeit wieder vermehrt auf das Interesse von Musikern stoßen. Die Opern und Chorwerke harren noch ihrer Wiederbelebung.