Franz Schmidt: Symphonien Nr.1-4 auf 3 CDs

Franz Schmidt, 1874 in Österreich-Ungarn geboren, war Komponist, Pianist, Cellist, Dirigent. Neben vier Sinfonien umfasst sein schlankes, aber umfangreiches musikalisches Werk zwei Opern, das Oratorium »Das Buch mit den sieben Siegeln«, konzertante Stücke für Klavier und Orchester, Kammermusik und Orgelwerke. Mit einer strahlenden, streitlustig optimistischen Sprache offenbart sich Schmidt als der letzte große Vertreter des style hongrois nach Schubert, Liszt und Brahms. Schmidts »Wiederentdeckung« in den letzten Jahren hat das Publikum immer wieder mit seiner spezifischen Tonsprache zwischen Spätromantik und Früher Moderne begeistert.

In dieser überwältigenden neuen Einspielung seiner gesamten Sinfonien werfen Paavo Järvi und das Radio-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt mit den schillernden Live-Aufführungen aller vier Sinfonien und dem berühmten »Notre-Dame-Intermezzo« ein neues Licht auf dieses faszinierende Werk und auf eine geniale Seele.

Die einzigartige 3-CD-Ausgabe enthält Liner Notes mit einer Einführung des Schmidt-Experten Adam Gellen.

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Franz Schmidt was was born in 1874 in the Hungarian town of Pozsony (now Bratislava) and died in Perchtoldsdorf near Vienna in 1939. Composer, pianist, cellist, conductor and Conservatory professor: he was one of the most esteemed figures in the musical life of his native Austria. In addition to four symphonies, his slender but substantial œuvre includes two operas, the oratorio The Book with Seven Seals, concertante pieces for piano and orchestra, chamber music and organ works. Schmidt composed on the same lavish scale as Mahler (under whom he played for the most part of 15 years as a cellist – after completing studies at the Vienna Conservatory, Schmidt played in the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper and the Wiener Philharmoniker), Strauss and Schoenberg, yet never embraced expressionism and atonality. Instead, at a time when others were exploring more fluid structures, while he perhaps stretched tonal harmony to its limits, he continued to embrace 19th-century form and achieved a highly personal synthesis of the diverse traditions of the Austro-German symphony. His language, rather than being wedded to a narrative of dissolution and tragedy is radiant and belligerently optimistic, and reveals this scion of largely Hungarian forebears as the last great exponent of the style hongrois after Schubert, Liszt and Brahms. He surely fell from prominence having been a composer feted by the Nazis – such associations prompted misgivings against which Schmidt was powerless to defend himself – but Schmidt’s output reminds us of the constant need to reappraise, rewrite and enrich our account of music during the first half of the 20th century. Paavo Järvi and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony's dazzling live performances of all four of his symphonies, and the famous Notre Dame Intermezzo, shine a new light on this fascinating oeuvre and on an affable and genial soul.