Spohr Faust

Louis Spohr gehörte als Geiger, Komponist, Dirigent und Pädagoge zu den vielseitigsten und einflussreichsten Persönlichkeiten des europäischen Musiklebens in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Als Komponist wurde er von seinen Zeitgenossen in einem Atemzug mit Beethoven genannt. Heute existieren über ihn Vorurteile, die viele Rezensenten und Wissenschaftler meist nur von einer Generation zur nächsten ungeprüft und in Unkenntnis der besten Werke übernommen haben. cpo will dem jetzt abhelfen und legt eine großangelegte Spohr-Edition vor, in deren Mittelpunkt die erste Gesamteinspielung der Violinkonzerte mit Ulf Hoelscher steht.

Louis Spohr’s career as a composer encompassed Beethoven’s Opus 18 string quartets and Wagner’s ‘Tristan and Isolde’. He spent a large part of his working life as the Kapelmeister in Kassel and was an important influence in early German Romanticism, writing 9 symphonies, 15 violin concertos and a number of operas including ‘Jessonda’ (perhaps his best known) and ‘Faust’. As a conductor he was one of the first people to make use of a baton, a fact which alarmed London orchestras when he first conducted them. A virtuoso violinist, Spohr wrote chamber music all his life. The two recorded here were originally part of a Marco Polo series of Spohr’s quintets and quartets.

This collection of chamber works by French female composers helps to consolidate our understanding of how important these musicians were to French culture during the period 1860-1960. Some of these names will be more familiar to the public than others, Germaine Tailleferre being perhaps the best known, mostly for her membership of Les Six. Others ought to be far more renowned than they are now.