Weismann VC1 from cpo

[Maury]

Recordings have sat in the vaults for longer than 13 years even in the pop world. The problem is more the intersection of our personal longevity with the date they decide to issue it in some way.

[Alan Howe]

the intersection of our personal longevity with the date they decide to issue it in some way.

Hmm. Well, my personal longevity might well run out before cpo decide to release this...

Anyway, to return to the music: any opinions?

[FBerwald]

I'm totally charmed by this music. Seems like we have a very interesting composer yet to be explored; and what a list. 3 Piano Concertos + a Suite, 4 Violin Concertos and Concertante works for Cello [2], Wind ensemble, French Horn and Trautonium. And what of his 5 Symphonies... ?!

[Maury]

In response to Mr Howe I took a listen to the Weismann VC and also read a bit about him. I was surprised by it quite frankly. He displays a good idiomatic understanding of violin technique and thus the need to balance the high register with aggressive G string passages. This is something that very few composers realize. I guess because of a pianistic background many composers write very unidiomatically for the violin or confuse orchestral violin parts with soloist parts. In Weismann's case he seems to have actually listened to violins more closely than the usual pianist. The orchestra is also effectively orchestrated if perhaps a bit over busy. The cadenza though a tad overlong (as is the concerto overall) is  very musical, more than the usual empty bravura.

In summary I would say this is one of the strongest Unsung Violin Concertos I have heard. He does appear to have resisted modernity almost entirely which may be linked to his bucolic retirement on the German Swiss border. I should add that I was favorably impressed with the musicality of the violin soloist on the recording. The one issue common with Unsungs is that the writing is not strikingly personal to the level you hear with famous composers. But he is not far below either. I would be interested in hearing some of his six operas. Like Rameau he started fairly late in writing them.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for these thoughts. Above all, the VC is memorable: I can hear that arresting opening in my mind's ear as I type...

[JanOscar]

Almost from the first note I was captured again...like by the march like beginning of his 2nd PC some 30 years ago.
Why on earth is he so unsung?!

[Alan Howe]

Why on earth is he so unsung?!

A question that we pose rather often here.

[Ilja]

In Weismann's case, I would think that the question is rather easily answered. The guy was a rather enthusiastic national socialist, and deeply entrenched in Nazi cultural politics. After Mendelssohn's music was banned, Weismann was commissioned to submit a replacement composition in 1934. Moreover, the success of his opera Die pfiffige Magd (1939), which received much official praise, made him well-known as an exponent of the regime. All that did not endear him to post-war programmers, the more so since his music was hardly avant-garde but for the most part also not all that distinctive. Particularly the stuff from the Nazi years suffers from a distinct lack of individuality, and his earlier works (which are almost all much more interesting, including those written during his foray into chromaticism from the 1920s) were forgotten by extension.

It's interesting to contrast him with Werner Egk, a much more succesful composer after the war. Egk's copybook was much more blotted than Weismann's, but he was able to deal with his Nazi past mostly by ignoring it or suing whoever dared to bring it up. He could do so because he was better protected and remained integrated in the musical establishment in West Berlin, where de-nazification was notoriously lax. Crucially, I think, his rather stern and spare musical style fitted the post-war aesthetic much better than Weismann's romanticism. In Baden, where Weismann was active, the situation was rather different.

[eschiss1]

FBerwald: two of his symphonies can be heard in recordings that may still be in our Downloads section(s), but not yet the others, I think.

[Maury]

Regarding why the extensive catalog of Unsungs, I think it is mainly due to the narrow commercial base of classical music in general. Very few people listen to Tchaikovsky let alone Shostakovich or Mahler. Classical music constitutes a steady 3-4% of music recording sales. I don't think streaming totals are much different.  This is infinitesimal compared with pop (broadly defined) music genres. In any endeavor the top 10  capture an outsize level of interest. Everyone else divides the remainder. There are far more second and third level pop artists and bands that have sizable followings and sales even many years after their heyday. This is because the total amount of revenue is so much greater. So even getting 5% of what the top pop acts get still provides a very comfortable income. Conversely getting 5% of the classical top ten gets a composer into this Forum.

[eschiss1]

"Very few people listen to..." is taken strictly speaking not actually true, since their music is used in soundtracks that reach a much wider audience (this is even true of a few less sung composers and some very specific works- though the introduction of those works has sometimes led to the increasing popularity of some of those works with the audience to those movies, qv Gorecki symphony no.3 and Barber's Adagio- and potentially works in our orbit too*  ). Less literally as you probably intended it, true, but that's why rephrasing for specificity is often a good idea... "knowingly listen to", for say, would have done.

*Who knows- Korngold's violin concerto (opening of the finale) appearing in an episode of "Stranger Things" may yet help that somewhat popular work find a new audience.

[Maury]

I don't want to get too diverted here from Weisman as I was just responding to Jan Oscar.  But to be clear the 3-4% sales figure does include the crossover classical music "hits" like Gorecki,, Barber Adagio, the 3 Tenors and any other classical sale derived from soundtrack/ad, radio play or pop song appearance.

[eschiss1]

There's a line in a novel by a favorite-of-mine late 20th-century British author, I think, which went along the lines of, very much paraphrasing, some things you spend money on to make money, some things you spend money on with the understanding that they'll [almost always] lose money [but that's ok if it's worth it]. It was the opera (as an institution, or opera companies/houses) specifically being referred to - the novel's name is "Maskerade"- but I can't help thinking of this whenever I hear the arts being asked to buck up and do their bit (not by you, Maury, but implicitly by the owners of the record conglomerates.)
Ah well. Don't mind me, this wasn't meant to be a constructive comment, I'm afraid.

[Maury]

What I don't understand and I guess it is shared by others is why you go to the great expense to record an orchestral work and then never spend the small amount that making a CD would cost or the even smaller expense of permitting lossless streaming. I could see it if the performance had serious issues but I didn't hear that. The only other thing is some rights issue but you would assume they wouldn't record in the first place if that were a problem. It's not like the old days when mastering and pressing an LP with its associated large cover had a more significant outlay. Authorizing lossless streaming costs essentially zero once you make the recording.

Has anyone queried CPO about this issue of 13 going on 14 years in the bin?

[Ilja]

We've discussed this issue often before. Short summary: cpo's relationships with its regular orchestras (of which the Nordwestdeutsche/NDR Philharmonie is one) is different from most other labels', so it's impossible to say why a delay occurs for outsiders, and 10+ years delays between recording and release have not been uncommon in the past.