Customer Reviews

Rudi Stephan: Orchestral Works [Hybrid SACD]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The 1911 Music for Violin and Orchestra (a kind of forerunner to Klaus Amadeus Hartmann's Concerto Funèbre of some 28 years later) and the first Music for Orchestra from 1910 were not received well by critics and musicians alike, being considered discordant and cerebral. Only the second Music for Orchestra (1912) established Stephan as a major composer.
I am not sure whether to call this music romantic, for all three compositions have a dark, brooding, almost scary quality that makes one feel slightly uneasy, as if Stephan had premonitions of the terrible things that were to happen in a short while and that would put a premature end to his life (like his British colleague George Butterworth whose life was cut short on the Western Front). It is however an intoxicating uneasiness, the large orchestra constantly in search of an opening to brighter textures, but never finding it. Not the kind of music one would like to expose the fainthearted to, but fascinating in a way that goes beyond explication.
Stephan left only a very small body of music (and some of that was lost in the next war) and one wonders how he would have developed further had he not died in 1915 at the same age as Mozart (and look what a musical legacy he left!). The music puts me firmly back on the ground in my brightest hour. Life is to be endured after all, not enjoyed (or is it?).