Customer Reviews

Symphony 4 / Variations on a Hussar's Song

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Franz Schmidt is currently on his way to be recognized as one of the most important representatives of the post-Mahlerian, post-romantic symphonic tradition. Indeed, there is something about Schmidt's symphonies - the fourth in particular - that suggests a certain post-apocalyptic feeling, not in terms of any feeling of tragedy in particular but because it feels as if Schmidt are writing the somewhat sobering afterwords to the works of Bruckner and Mahler at the very end of the romantic era (the symphony dates from 1933). I don't mean that in any derogatory sense; Schmidt was a master of symphonic thinking and a master of writing for the orchestra; his symphonies are tautly constructed, and the magnificent fourth in particular is a bold, optimistically, richly toned, harmonically chromatic work that avoids excess or pomposity, but one that still belongs to the Mahler and Bruckner tradition (with Reger, perhaps, being another important point of reference) in terms of its tonal language (and perhaps even attempting to tie this tradition back to Beethoven), but more modest in scope if not content and far more concerned with succinctness.

The fourth symphony is a masterpiece. It is really cast in a single developmental arch, where the glorious, stirring opening 23 bars of the first movement provides the material from which the symphony will be constructed (the melody of those bars hauntingly return at the end of the finale, transformed and transfigured by the events in between). The opening movement itself is a marvelous and passionate though complex development of the material. It leads into the imposing Adagio that opens with a wonderfully lyrical part based on a solo cello threnody, followed by a bleak funeral march culminating in a shattering climax before yielding to the original theme. The Scherzo is based on a version of the threnody material from the Adagio, and is a troubled, ambiguous but cogently argued movement laying the groundwork for the magnificent finale and the haunting conclusion featuring the very opening of the symphony. It is, to emphasize it yet again, a marvelous work and a worthy conclusion to the great romantic symphonic tradition.

The Variations on a Hussar's Song is an enjoyable though substantial work, inventive but generally dignified and noble - no match for the symphony but a very fine work nonetheless. Welser-Möst exhibits deep understanding and sympathy for the music - I have not heard many alternative versions (though there are some of them out there), but I cannot imagine anyone making a much more convincing case for either work, though the symphony in particular (one could perhaps argue that the Variations hang fire at points). The London Philharmonic responds magnificently and the sound is detailed, realistic and clear. Overall, then, this disc can be firmly recommended, and the music is absolutely mandatory for any fan of Bruckner or Mahler.