Gielen Orf Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra - Lyrische Symphonie 18 - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Ernst von Dohnanyi was one of the most versatile and influential musicians of his time but his works are now seldom played. A gap which Capriccio want to fill now with this fifth recording of his late romantic, sensual music, deeply rooted in the Austro-German classical tradition. An appetizer is the overture of the one-act opera Tanta Simona, which has plenty of that Italian flair to show for that runs through the opera's plot. After it's premiere in 1910, the Suite in F-sharp minor Op.19 became one of the most performed Dohnányi's works, whereas the American Rhapsody Op.47, which is full of quotations with American folk melodies, was his last orchestral work, first performed in 1954 at Ohio University. Finally his 8 years younger colleague Leó Weiner shows us in his early composition, the Serenade in F minor (1906) apart from the influence of the German and Austrian romantics, typical Hungarian colors and rhythms.

Among Bruckner's Symphonies, the Fifth is his contrapuntal masterpiece; the grandest until the Eighth. The tour-de-force of a finale gives us an idea of what the finale of the Ninth might have been like. It's magnificent dark and halting opening with the descending bass line - so effectively recalled in the finale - is inimitable. Although long available only in a disfigured version by Franz Schalk, it is also distinct for never having been the subject to revision or, perhaps, even doubt on the part of Bruckner - who never heard it performed with an orchestra. And yet, when Bruckner wrote this masterpiece, he was still far from establishing himself as a composer in Vienna and his spirits were as low as ever, writing a friend that Inchmy life has lost all joy and delight - in vain and for nothing.Inch A radiant pinnacle from amid darkness.

Slightly the audience remember that I'm - as a descendant of writing tonal music - still alive and continue composing. (Walter Braunfels, 1946) Walter Braunfels is a composer whose music died twice Once when the Nazis declared his music Inchdegenerate artInch. Then again when post-war Germany had little use for the various schools of tonal music; when the arbiters of taste considered any form of romantic music - almost the whole pre-war aesthetic - to be tainted. This 9th of Capriccio's Braunfels Edition shows us also an open-minded composer who experimented with Jazz elements in his Divertimento for radio-orchestra in 1929.