Schmidt Symphony 2 from Bychkov/VPO!

[Alan Howe]

This is a must-buy for me - Schmidt 2 played by the Vienna Philharmonic!
http://www.mdt.co.uk/schmidt-symphony-2-strauss-dreaming-by-fireside-semyon-bychkov-sony.html

[MartinH]

Indeed it is. The performance at the 2015 Proms was fantastic, and I was hoping and praying that it would be recorded and what do you know? Now if they could just find the resources and record 1,3, & 4!

[M. Yaskovsky]

Could be great, but............. R. Strauss - Dreaming by the Fireside? An undiscovered symphonic poem or what?

[Alan Howe]

No: one of the interludes from his opera Intermezzo!

[eschiss1]

Out of curiosity, do performances from the revised new versions of the Schmidt 2nd symphony parts and score make a serious difference in the listening experience (assuming the conductor and orchestra are as good as in an orchestra playing from one in an earlier orchestra using the old unrevised (possibly error-y) parts/score? That is, assuming that most modern performances use the new Gesellschaft edition (1972 iirc, the one reprinted by MPH in 2013), is there an audible difference in the music they're playing from that of "classic" performances (like the one we used to/may still have in our "Downloads" section, and ones that have been available commercially...)?

[MartinH]

In the preface to the 1972 score, the editor points out that there were many errors in the first edition of the score and that Schmidt complained about it when he was conducting. The parts were printed after the score and had fewer errors, but were far from perfect. Then the editor goes on to say that the parts "contained other - and fewer - errors, which in turn were absorbed by the splendid overall sound of the work and could thus not impair it." I've listened to every recording made of this symphony and there are some extremely minor differences that you can pick out, but is it a playing error or a mistake in the part? Hard to say, especially with some of the lesser orchestras that have recorded it.

The difficulty in playing this symphony is well known - the string parts are monstrously hard, the wind parts quite taxing. I recall reading one review of the score that said you wouldn't want to hear this symphony played by anything less than a great orchestra! The two earliest recordings, Mitropoulos and Leinsdorf, were both made by the Vienna Philharmonic, and one would hope that having played it with Schmidt, that the parts would have corrections written it. Nonetheless, both recordings show serious defects in playing, and maybe conducting, that aren't the fault of the parts. Listen to the strings scramble at the opening of the Mitropoulos recording - it's awful. So maybe after all these decades, the Philharmonic is going to set the record straight and produce as good a recording of this complex score that can be done. The Chicago recording is terrific and is going to be hard to beat. The performance that should have been recorded for posterity was a tremendous reading with Sawallisch when he was ending his tenure in Philadelphia. I heard it in Carnegie Hall and it was just stunning. The Vienna performance in London was also sensational. I hope the recording captures it.

[Alan Howe]

The new recording sounds pretty spectacular to me on first hearing. Reminds me of when I encountered the classic Mehta/VPO rendering of No.4 all those years ago...

[minacciosa]

Not released here until June.

[Alan Howe]

It'll be worth the wait.

[Ilja]

For the curious, it's already on Spotify.

[eschiss1]

Also on Naxos Music Library, fwiw. I'll go listen and try to compare soon Cheers!

[JP]

The emphatic wishes and aspirations of the post-romanticized collective to hear, behold and become mesmerized by the magnificent bars and chords of Franz Schmidt's gloriously sonorous symphonies performed live within a concert hall setting by the exclusively select musical sensibilities and superlative musicianship of the Big League Austro-Germanic orchestras may perhaps be ringing true after all. 

With the just announced rollout of their 2017-18 concert season schedule, I'm most elatedly pleased to relay the good tidings that the Berlin Phil under the direction of its soon-to-be musical director Maestro Kirill Petrenko will be giving a rare rendition (premiere performance for the BPO?) of Schmidt's 4th Symphony almost a year hence from now on the yonder dales of next April 14th.   

< https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/concert/51178 >

Hopefully a recording of this upcoming performance would be issued in due course either on DG or be featured in some of the future releases of their trademark in-house label. To get an approximate feel as to how Petrenko would probably approach this work from an interpretive standpoint, check out this youtube upload of an almost 2 decade old radio broadcast recording of this very work that he did with the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln back in 2000: 

< https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDPElQkEX1g&t=150s >

Meantime let's all go on a fanciful bout of wishful reveries daydreaming whether Petrenko gets to conduct the trilogy of Josef Suk's major orchestral works which he recorded previously on CPO with the BPO. With the ebulliently uplifting strains of Joseph Marx's Autumn Symphony soon to be heard this fall and Schmidt's tragic 4th following suit next spring, the fair winds and tides of Musica Obscurae Hyper Romantica are most fortuitously blowing our way for the duration of this fleeting season. 

Best wishes to One and All, JP.

[MartinH]

I was delighted to see that the BPO is getting around to Schmidt and reason enough to subscribe to their Digital Concert Hall. Cheaper than traveling all the way to Berlin for sure. The Schmidt symphonies and Das Buch are fairly commonly encountered in smaller German orchestras, but for the premiere orchestra in that country to take him up is encouraging.

[eschiss1]

Well, Furtwängler performed only a couple of works, according to the family website. Karajan seems to have performed one of those works (the Intermezzo from Notre Dame) too, but according to an article reviewing Kristjan Järvi's recording of Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln, it may be unlikely Karajan performed much Schmidt at all given that Schmidt "dismissed [Karajan's] conducting talents" (early in the latter's career) and according to Franz Welser-Möst, Karajan never forgave Schmidt for that. From the timeline at the Berlin Phil website that leaves the "eras" of Abbado and Simon Rattle (and any guest conductors) - the site doesn't have a searchable list of programs as the Vienna Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic do (but then, those things are hard to compile) during which any symphonies of Schmidt at all might have been performed by the BPO...

[raffite33]

From MDG, in a few days, there'll be a competing issue of Schmidt's 2nd from the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn, under Blunier.  Not quite the same caliber as the VPO, I'd guess, but this one will be on SACD, as was their issue of the 4th some years back, should anyone care.