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CHAN 9568 Booklet cover.qxd 16/1/08 2:57 pm Page 1 ( ) Chan 9568 4 CHANDOS COMPLETE SYMPHONIES SCHMIDT CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA DETROIT SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA NEEME JÄRVI CHAN 9568 BOOK.qxd 16/1/08 2:59 pm Page 2 Franz Schmidt (1874–1939) COMPACT DISC ONE Symphony No. 1† 44:51 in E major . E-Dur . mi majeur 1 I Sehr langsam – Sehr lebhaft 11:37 2 II Langsam 11:44 AKG 3 III Schnell und leicht 10:59 4 IV Lebhaft, doch nicht zu schnell 10:14 COMPACT DISC TWO Symphony No. 2* 46:55 in E flat major . Es-Dur . mi bémol majeur 1 I Lebhaft 14:35 2 II Allegretto con variazioni: Einfach und zart 19:02 Variazione 1: In demselben Zeitmaß – Variazione 2: Etwas fließender – Variazione 3: Schnell und leicht – Variazione 4: Schnell (Dasselbe Zeitmaß) – Variazione 5: Sehr schnell – Variazione 6: Langsam und ruhig – Franz Schmidt Variazione 7: Sehr schnell – Variazione 8: Sehr leidenschaftlich, nicht zu schnell – Variazione 9: Scherzo: Sehr lebhaft – Variazione 10: Trio: Sehr ruhig 3 III Finale: Langsam 13:05 3 CHAN 9568 BOOK.qxd 16/1/08 2:59 pm Page 4 COMPACT DISC THREE Symphony No. 3* 42:19 Schmidt: Symphonies Nos 1–4 in A major . A-Dur . la majeur 1 I Allegro molto moderato 14:01 2 II Adagio 7:23 Symphony No. 1 moved to Vienna in 1888, he was an 3 III Scherzo: Allegro vivace 8:58 When Franz Schmidt was born in Pressburg accomplished enough pianist to earn money 4 IV Lento – Allegro vivace 11:44 in 1874, that city was still part of the playing for dance classes. Habsburg empire; Brahms had settled in He entered the Vienna Conservatory at the COMPACT DISC FOUR Vienna, but not for another two years would age of sixteen, where he studied composition he bring his First Symphony to the public. (briefly with Bruckner, then with Robert Symphony No. 4† 42:12 In 1939, when Schmidt died, Pressburg was Fuchs) and cello, on which he became a in C major . C-Dur . ut majeur part of Czechoslovakia and Vienna under the virtuoso. As a student, he began composing 1 I Allegro molto moderato – 13:13 rule of the Third Reich; of the members of in earnest, and his cadenza for Haydn’s Piano 2 II Adagio – 12:06 the Second Viennese School, Alban Berg was Concerto in D caught the attention of the 3 III Molto vivace – 7:37 dead, Schoenberg had fled to the United aged Brahms. His skill as a cellist won him a 4 IV Tempo primo un poco sostenuto 9:16 States, and Webern’s music had been banned place in the Vienna Philharmonic, where he Marcy Chanteaux cello soloist by the Nazis. Through all these changes in triumphed over forty competitors in an the musical and political landscape, Schmidt audition. He kept his place in the orchestra Chicago Symphony Orchestra* remained constant, blending musical until 1911, supplementing his income by Detroit Symphony Orchestra† Classicism and Romanticism in his teaching at the Conservatory and broadening Neeme Järvi compositions and playing an active part in his musical horizons by playing both cello Viennese musical life as a teacher, and piano in chamber music. administrator, and chamber-music player. At the age of twenty-two, Schmidt wrote His family, like many in the border region his First Symphony, and it took the where he grew up, was of mixed ancestry. His Beethoven Prize from the Gesellschaft der father came from German stock; his mother, Musikfreunde. Three more symphonies born Maria Ravasz, was probably of Slovak followed, and in Austria he ranks just behind ancestry. The young Schmidt took his first Bruckner for his orchestral works. His late music lessons from the cathedral organist in oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The his home town; by the time the family Book with Seven Seals) is a staple of the 4 5 CHAN 9568 BOOK.qxd 16/1/08 2:59 pm Page 6 repertoire in German-speaking countries, and off the scherzo gives a gentle reminder of the unfavourable review of the work appeared the theme and second variation, for example, as recently as 1987 it caused a scandal when horn theme that opened the first movement. among six favourable ones in the Vienna press are played by the woodwind alone, the first performed at the Salzburg Festival with some In its course, this movement is swift and after a performance in 1958 the orchestra held and third variations solely by the strings, and nudity in the staging that shocked nimble, slowing only briefly for a waltz-like an opinion poll of the members of its so on. The ensembles gradually expand until conservative audiences. Outside of Austria interlude. audience, asking for reaction to the bad review by the ninth variation virtually the whole and Germany, the work that has travelled the All of Schmidt’s skill and spirit are – needless to say, it was condemned and the orchestra is in use. This is the most extended best has been the 1903 orchestral suite from displayed in the finale, in which elements of Symphony vindicated, showing the Viennese of the variations and is actually the scherzo of his unfinished opera Notre Dame. fugue, chorale and dance mingle without people’s devotion to a composer still often the work, with the peaceful tenth variation as The First Symphony, first performed in self-consciousness. Such a machine cannot be overlooked outside the city. its trio. Vienna on 25 January, 1902, is a braked to a quick stop, So Schmidt eases into The Symphony is scored for a very large The slow opening to the Finale again uses compendium of the styles and forms the conclusion with a broad coda, going orchestra, including five clarinets, eight horns the ‘motto’ theme, this time treated Schmidt knew from his studies and from his nowhere harmonically, but casting a and four trumpets, with all the other contrapuntally. The tempo gradually picks experience as an orchestral player, though a moment’s backward glance at the festivities departments enlarged in compensation, yet up, gathering almost rondo-like recalls of unifying intelligence is audible. He scores the that preceded. Schmidt’s use of his vast forces is delicate and earlier movements on the way, until the work for a late-Brahms orchestra, without subtle as often as it is full-bodied and sturdy. Symphony blazes towards its tumultuous the extra basses beloved by Bruckner or the © Michael Fleming The three movements form a pattern, final bars. piquant colours of Mahler. Thematically, the unusual in the symphonic repertoire, of a first movement follows in a Brucknerian Symphony No. 2 prelude, a set of variations, incorporating a © Matthew Rye path, with a wide-ranging theme in the horns When Schmidt finally resigned from the scherzo and trio, and a coda. But they are all accompanied by rushing strings. The scale of Vienna Philharmonic in 1911, he held together by the use of a unifying Symphony No. 3 the movement is much slighter than immediately began work on his Second melodic idea, first heard in the Baroque-like Franz Schmidt was surrounded by tradition Bruckner’s edifices, but Schmidt builds with Symphony, in doing so breaking his seven opening theme (whose keyboard style of in Vienna. As a respected teacher at the equal skill, laying out the sections broadly years’ inactivity in the field of composition. It figuration points to the Symphony’s Academy of Music, then Rektor of the and with assurance. was completed in August 1913 and first presumed beginnings as a projected piano Technical High School for Music and For his slow movement, Schmidt moves to performed in the Musikverein under Frank sonata). Theatrical Art, the former orchestral cellist the far-distant key of A flat, as if retiring to Schalk four months later. It was taken up by Its outline reappears in the Allegretto 3/8 was even one of its official state meditate after his exertions. Woodwinds have the Vienna Philharmonic the following season theme of the second movement. Here representatives. Too easily categorized as a the lead here, singing a woodland idyll that and was subsequently revived from time to Schmidt uses his orchestra to great effect, ‘late-romantic’ (although his music on one grows passionate in its reveries, then subsides. time, but it has always been the subject of restricting most of the variations to relatively level invites this), Schmidt was nevertheless a The upward whoop of the horns that kicks critical discussion. Indeed, when an small, self-contained instrumental groupings: musician with broad sympathies that 6 7 CHAN 9568 BOOK.qxd 16/1/08 2:59 pm Page 8 extended to the modernist experimentation Schmidt played in the Philharmonic which Schmidt’s Fourth Symphony received born and lived one’s life under its auspices’. of contemporaries like Arnold Schoenberg. Orchestra and whose music he did not much its first performance, between Schumann’s What follows, however, is no otherworldly These conflicting currents meet like), is permeated by an improvisatory voice Piano Concerto and Strauss’s Also sprach vision but a rich engagement with life: first fascinatingly in the third of his four full of the passing grief that the ‘music’ itself Zarathustra, was prophetic of Schmidt’s in music of gradual awakening, then in an symphonies, composed in 1927–28, seeks to assuage. posthumous reputation. Revered in his native expansive, passionato theme, whose figuration ostensibly as an aesthetic statement of Following the strong conclusion of the land, he has elsewhere been regarded as a recalls the Hungarian gypsy music of allegiance with the early nineteenth century.