Anthony Halstead conducts Johann Wilhelm Wilms [Import]

Halstead: cnd/Netherlands Ra (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 11, 2006)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Challenge
• ASIN: B000EOTCBK
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #434,169 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile Symphonies from a Beethoven Contemporary, February 25, 2009

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M. C. Passarella "lpassarella" (Lawrenceville, GA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Anthony Halstead conducts Johann Wilhelm Wilms (Audio CD)

Among Beethoven's contemporaries, Johann Wilhelm Wilms is unique in some ways. Born two years after Beethoven, Wilms began writing symphonies almost a decade before, probably around the time Haydn was working on his first brace of London Symphonies (1791-2). Wilms's last symphony, No. 7, appeared ten years after Beethoven's death, so the creative period and stylistic changes mapped by Wilms's symphonies are great even if he was never an innovator like Beethoven.

The publication dates and opus numbers of Wilms's symphonies add confusion to any attempt to determine Wilms's symphonic achievement. For instance, the Opus 14 Symphony was published in 1809 but clearly written years earlier. It has a Haydnesque slow introduction and sprightly first movement together with a last movement that takes as its model Mozart's 39th Symphony (1788). The Symphony Opus 23, written around 1805, represents an advance on Opus 14. Cast in C minor, it has greater drama and passion about it, though it clearly has more in common with the minor-key symphonies of Mozart than with Beethoven's C Minor Symphony, No. 5. Interestingly, Wilms's Opus 52, published in the wake of the success of Opus 23, is undoubtedly of the same vintage as Opus 14 and Wilms's earliest symphonies, Opus 9 and 10. The high opus number (52) is just a publisher's ruse.

Only with Opus 58, Wilms's Symphony No. 6, are we firmly in the nineteenth century. Written in 1819, the symphony pays obvious homage to Beethoven. The Haydnesque trappings are mostly gone, though the playful writing for winds in the last movement is closer to Haydn than to Beethoven. And like the corresponding movement in Haydn's Symphony 103, the last movement is monothematic, the minor-key first melody simply being cast in the major to take the place of a second melody. It's a taut, athletic sort of symphony with a steel spring of a scherzo that is very Beethovenian. Yet Wilms remains very much his own man, unlike some Beethoven contemporaries and imitators.

Even the Haydnesque symphonies Opus 14 and 52 are fine works in their own right. I think you'll acknowledge Haydn's fingerprints throughout but still admire Wilms's craft and bounding energy. These are better Haydn knock-offs than Ignace Pleyel, Haydn's own student, ever pulled off!

As to the performances, early-music specialist Anthony Halstead and his chamber orchestra approach these symphonies with a perfect understanding of period style, including the proper balance of winds and strings--and those all-important timpani, played with verve and, of course, with hard-headed mallets. While Werner Ehrhardt and Concerto Koln on DG offer competition in Symphony No. 6 (Opus 58), their approach is a bit overemphatic for me. However, their disc is indispensible for its inclusion of Wilms's most powerful symphony, No. 7. Like the musical approach, DG's sound is more aggressive--bigger than life--but then I'd have appreciated a little more presence and atmosphere in the Challenge Classics recording, basically good though it is.

In any event, Wilms is an important composer and what's even better, a likeable and enjoyable one. I recommend both CDs heartily.

5.0 out of 5 stars beyond Beethoven, into the early-romantic style, October 10, 2011

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Discophage (France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Anthony Halstead conducts Johann Wilhelm Wilms (Audio CD)

I've just recently discovered the name and music of Johann Wilhelm Wilms, through the CD of Concerto Köln playing his two last symphonies on Archiv (see my review of Johann Wilhelm Wilms: Symphonien Nos. 6 & 7), and I've enjoyed it so much that I decided to explore more: and more is here. Wilms was born in Germany in 1772 near Cologne but made the bold decision to establish in Amsterdam at the age of 19, and remained there for the rest of his life (a little like Bonn-born Beethoven and Vienna, although Vienna was a far greater center for musical life than Amsterdam). Just to give a perspective, Wilm's dates, 1772-1847, make him a near contemporary of Beethoven by birth (1770-1827) and a near contemporary of Mendelssohn (1809-1847) and Chopin (1810-1849) by death. Spohr, Weber, Berwald, Meyerbeer, Schubert - to name only the composers most remembered today that one associates with the early romantic style - were born, still in the 18th century, but after Wilms. Weber and Schubert died before him. Wilms was a contemporary of the ascent of Berlioz (1830: Symphonie fantastique), Mendelssohn (1830 Symphony "Reformation", 1833: "Italian" Symphony, 1840: Symphony "Lobgesang", 1842: "Scottish" symphony, Midsummer Night's Dream), Chopin, Schumann (1841: original version of the Symphony No. 4, Symphony No. 1, 1845: Piano Concerto, 1846: Symphony No. 2), Liszt (the piano music; the symphonic poems were written after Wilms' death).

The development of Wilms' symphonic style shows these influences, with the proviso that his last symphony, the 7th, was written in 1837, and the penultimate, No. 6 op. 58, in 1820 (that's also the year Spohr composed his second symphony). Halstead plays the 3rd to 6th Symphonies, although opus numbers/dates of publication may be misleading. The galant-to-festal style and march-like rhythms of the "slow" movement of opus 14, "Andante poco allegretto", and of the Menuetto and trio, as well as the light-hearted vivacity of its finale hark back to the classical era - and, in the two middle movements, to much lesser composers than Haydn and Mozart. The liner notes say that the symphony was composed in 1809, and if so (as they point out), apparently the shockwave of Beethoven's Eroica (1803) had not reached Amsterdam. There is, nonetheless, in the first movement, a muscularity of phrasings (and spicy woodwind writing) that may adumbrate Beethoven.

But 1809 as composition date (as opposed to publication) is in fact dubious: according to the liner notes, Symphony opus 23 was composed around 1805, and that would make it an earlier composition than opus 14. Playing by ear, I am doubtful. The darker hues of its outer movements seem to point to romanticism much more than opus 14, and in ways that, if even present in anything written by Mozart, would be found only in the more dramatic passages of the Requiem. Even when the finale alternates between the turbulent/dramatic and the playful and jaunty, there is a sardonic undercurrent lurking that may recall Weber's Freischutz. In fact, going back to the liner notes of the Concerto Köln CD, it seems that opus 14 was published in 1809 but composed much earlier, around 1793, and that makes more sense to my ears. There is a huge stylistic leap between the two, and in fact opus 23 is written in a decidedly somber, turbulent, early romantic mood. While the Andante retains something of the elegance of the old style, again the textures and moods are denser, more somber and romantic: this is music evocative of the operas of Weber or Marschner, not Mozart or Haydn. Likewise with the rustic dance that now serves as what is still called a Menuetto, but is really now a fully-fledged romantic scherzo. Only the trio, with its woodwind interplay, may recall the Mozart-type serenades. The music comes with nice and unexpected turns of melodic invention or orchestration (as the concertante passage for strings erupting in the andante at 5:30). It is fascinating to experience that change of style and sensibility, not jumping, say, from Mozart to Weber or Mendelssohn or Schumann, but within a single composer's symphonic oeuvre.

There's a lightness and merriment, an optimistic enthusiasm in op. 52 that might seem to hark back also to the classical era - the liner notes even surmise that it may be contemporary of op. 14, but again I am doubtful. To my ear its compositional procedure and moods rather point to Schubert's early symphonies or Weber (what happens around 1:04 minute in the Poco Adagio could NEVER have been composed by Mozart, Haydn or even Beethoven), and the general merriment doesn't preclude darker passages (as the canonic passage in the first movement at 6:11). Only the Menuetto and trio could remotely pass off for something Mozart or Haydn could have written. But this very indeterminacy of style is really one of the fascinating pointers to music styles in a state of flux and transition. The symphony is marvelously orchestrated, always varied, and with great interplay between strings and woodwinds.

While the middle "Andante quasi allegretto e grazioso" of op. 58 retains again something of the elegant and galant quality of the music of the previous era, there is great romantic sweep in its outer movements and scherzo (typically no more called a Menuetto) - and a horn solo tune at 3:43 in the first movement that could never had been written by a composer from the classical era. The symphony also provides an opportunity to assess the interpretive merits of Anthony Halstead, since it is one of the two symphonies also recorded by Concerto Köln (the other being Wilms' 7th and last). In the first movement Concerto Köln goes more for the contrasts, adopting a slower tempo in the slow introduction and investing it with more weight and forbidding pathos; their sonics also have more clarity and transparence. Halstead here is brisker, with more romantic sweep. But then Concerto Köln hurl into the allegro proper with more bite and fury, making Halstead sound laid-back and at times almost staid in comparison; still, his woodwind interplay has more charm, and his tutti are powerful. In the other movements the tempo choices are very similar and while Concerto Köln may have again marginally more bite (but the clarinetist is pressed to his limits at 2:03 in the scherzo), Halstead is excellent in his own right. In the Andante Concerto Köln may be more dramatic in the few dramatic moments but there is also an acidity to the tone of the period instruments that makes Halstead preferable here, I find.

Wilms' main claim to fame was when he won a competition in 1815 to provide the new Dutch national anthem, a version that remained in force until 1898 when the Netherlands returned to the old "Wilhemus van Nassauwe" (or Nassouwe) tune. Wilms' Variations on the "Wilhelmus van Nassauwe" (date of composition not provided; Wilms uses an old, briskly marching version of the tune, with none of the solemnity of the anthem as it is played today) are also written in a charming but inconsequential style one easily associates with Crusell, Bärman, Hummel, but they are interesting for displaying each solo instruments in turn (and some duets), a kind of Concerto for orchestra or symphony concertante for clarinet, flute, bassoon, violin and cello.

In a way, Wilms' decision to establish in Amsterdam was not such an auspicious one. Apparently, he wasn't all that successful as a composer, because Amsterdam preferred virtuoso interpreters, and he has to spend much time teaching to make his living. Had he lived in, say, Vienna rather than Amsterdam, I feel that he might be a much better remembered composer today.