on Capriccio Records with the first recording of the Hamlet Overture
Gürzenich Orchester Köln · Christopher Ward
http://www.capriccio.at/hans-rott-complete-orchestral-works-vol-1
This should be a great recording and series... I have several including the Paavo Jarvi and the Trinks version.
(http://capriccio.at/images/1035.jpg)
https://youtu.be/ihVzPs_ANvg?t=15 (https://youtu.be/ihVzPs_ANvg?t=15)
No details yet of availability.
Hans Rott - Instrumental Works
CD1
Overture to "Hamlet" in a minor
A Prelude to "Julius Caesar" in B major
Pastoral Prelude for Orchestra in F major
Suite for Orchestra in B flat major
Suite in E major
CD2
Symphony for String Orchestra (eight parts) in A-flat major
Symphony No. 1 in E major
Symphonic Movement [It's not clear if this is the Symphony Finale in F major (Nowak no. 38 / Banks no. 38)]
Not included on the CDs is the Orchestral Prelude in E major
Other possible remaining orchestral works for a third CD include various autograph fragments and sketches for the Symphony No. 2, and a "March of the Scharwache"[= a special kind of guard] in c-sharp minor for orchestra.
The complete detailed list of orchestral works can be seen at: http://www.hans-rott.de/werke/works.htm (http://www.hans-rott.de/werke/works.htm)
(https://abload.de/img/rottfbjsc.jpg)
Source, please?
The label's youtube promo
Right at the end - yes. Thanks, I hadn't spotted that.
I don't understand the album covers.
According to three separate websites, Vol. 1 is scheduled to be released on the 4th of September.
https://www.weltbild.de/artikel/musik/hans-rott-saemtliche-orchesterwerke-vol-1_27804214-1 (https://www.weltbild.de/artikel/musik/hans-rott-saemtliche-orchesterwerke-vol-1_27804214-1)
https://www.saturn.de/de/product/_christopher-g%C3%BCrzenich-orchester-k%C3%B6ln-ward-hans-rott-s%C3%A4mtliche-orchesterwerke-vol-1-sinfon-cd-2658876.html (https://www.saturn.de/de/product/_christopher-g%C3%BCrzenich-orchester-k%C3%B6ln-ward-hans-rott-s%C3%A4mtliche-orchesterwerke-vol-1-sinfon-cd-2658876.html)
https://www.buecher.de/shop/orchester/hans-rott-saemtliche-orchesterwerke-vol-1/wardchristopherguerzenich-orchester-koeln/products_products/detail/prod_id/59536569/ (https://www.buecher.de/shop/orchester/hans-rott-saemtliche-orchesterwerke-vol-1/wardchristopherguerzenich-orchester-koeln/products_products/detail/prod_id/59536569/)
Thanks. That's very helpful.
why the ugly cover? she looks like she has a huge cabbage on her head..
That looks to be CGI rendered, first time I've seen that for a classical music cover.
I've seen them before somewhere.
(https://media1.jpc.de/image/w600/rear/0/0845221054087.jpg)
This is the source of the cover images:
https://www.shutterstock.com/g/majorgaine (https://www.shutterstock.com/g/majorgaine)
Hmmmmmmm
How many people will say when they see these: 'Ah, Hans Rott...' ;)
None. They'll say: what's this cheesy fantasy stuff doing here?
Quite! One does wonder sometimes about the covers of certain CDs...
Smacks of doing it on the cheap.
Would this have been more appropriate?>>
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0a/Vincenzo_Camuccini%2C_The_Death_of_Julius_Caesar_%28detail%29.jpg/400px-Vincenzo_Camuccini%2C_The_Death_of_Julius_Caesar_%28detail%29.jpg)
[The Death of Julius Caesar by Camuccini - cropped]
Some record companies have the most absurd ideas about CD cover artwork. For fine examples of how to do it well look no further than CPO or Hyperion.
I'm obviously in a contrary mood today, but maybe the label used this picture in a bid to interest younger buyers in an impulse purchase of a product which wouldn't normally attract them when packaged in sober images created by centuries-dead artists. After all, the mostly-old crusties like me who buy classical music are a market which is dying off and they need to find younger customers to replace them. I suspect the same reasoning is behind the trend to give classical CDs generic titles like "Idyll" or "Ring of Fire", rather than the traditional composer/work/artists run down on the cover.
Well, I can honestly say that I have NEVER been influenced to buy a recording (LP, cassette or CD) by the artwork on the cover. To me it is totally irrelevant. I used to like the old DG Archiv label LPs which had a completely plain cover with just the details of the composer, work and performers; rather like the covers for Hyperion's Classical Piano Concerto series today. I am interested solely in the music. But I expect I am in a minority.
Capriccio has something of a track record with this type of album cover; their Braunfels series likewise sports slightly bizarre covers (n.b.: I don't aesthetically mind the ones under discussion here so much, to be honest, compared to that series).
With the few record covers I've designed myself (one was Sterling's Raff Violin Concerto) I always attempted to make it somehow representative of the atmosphere of the music. That doesn't need to be a period painting, either, so long as there is a similarity in mood. You don't put Boecklin's Isle of the Dead on a recording of Franz Schmidt's 2nd Symphony, or Klimt on the cover of a Strauss Waltzes CD.
In fact, the use of period art can backfire as well, as it sometimes does with CPO. An example where it works well in my view is their use of Peder Kroyer's work on the Ludolf Nielsen Symphony No. 2 / Berceuse / Lyrisk Nocturne CD; but I feel it doesn't work so well in early classical work where basically all the CDs tend to look the same due to the similarity of much of the artwork.
The Suite in E is a significant small and incomplete work. Its core theme was used by Mahler to end his first symphony.
I welcome anything by Hans Rott, and I don't care if it comes wrapped in day-glo cellophane or an old tin can. Although I hate these covers, they certainly grabbed everyone's attention, whether it was a good reaction or bad, and that's supposedly the key to successful marketing. Once seen ne'er forgotten (no matter how much you try)!
I have already put in a request for a digital copy of the Rott which I hope to receive earlier. Who cares about cover anyway?
The music is wonderful!!!! I add yet another Hamlet to my collection. The one suite (short one) reminds me of Mahler. Good liner notes on the works. Now I have two by Rott and I am very happy!
I just received the CD of the orchestral works Vol. 1. Not a revelation like the Scherzo of his Symphony but nonetheless fascinating pieces to be found here in solid interpretations by the Gürzenich Orchestra.
Quote from: sdtom on Tuesday 28 July 2020, 12:43
Who cares about cover anyway?
It just gives us something to complain about. ;D
QuoteIt just gives us something to complain about.
And "Wouldn't your life be terribly flat with nothing whatever to grumble at?!" No prizes for guessing the opera.
I'd an idea it might be G & S, but I digress...
Yes, Alan. It's "Princess Ida" and I paraphrased. The actual words are: "Isn't your life extremely flat with nothing whatever to grumble at." Anyway, enough of this digression. Apologies.
Ida'n idea it was...
Hurwitz opines...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyv7iNFe4qg
FWIW I agree (ducks!) Give me unrecorded Zellner, Grimm, Scholz, Reuss, at al instead! (Or as well as!)
In the Capriccio version of Symphony No.1, Christopher Ward needs 9:42 minutes for the (uncut) second movement. Leif Segerstam in his BIS recording 14:01 minutes... I have only these two versions - and that should do.
And I just wonder how Capriccio's cover artwork staff came to choose these rather Jugendstil-inspired subjects... They look like jewellery promotions... Rott's music has nothing to do with Jugendstil.
David Hurwitz gives this disc a resounding thumbs up in his latest video review (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyv7iNFe4qg), and gives Hans Rott and his music an emphatic thumbs down in the process. Can't say I disagree with most of what he says, actually.
I haven't heard the disk but, judging by the excerpts Hurwitz plays, if the Pastoral Prelude is the best piece on this CD, then I have to agree with him. The disk may be well-produced and beautifully conducted and played, but this music is not only uninspired but inept (witness the dreary fugue and awful coda to the Pastoral Prelude). And, given that, one seriously wonders why excellent musicians and a good record company would bother wasting their time on this stuff when, as Alan points out, there are many more neglected (nay, unheard) compositions that are more deserving of their, and our, attention.
Trouble is, Rott has become a 'name', and therefore a selling-point. The Symphony is no doubt of great interest - and (historical) significance - but there's precious little else. A triumph of marketing over substance, I'm afraid - and all summed up by that stupid cover artwork.
I can't say that the cover worries me one little bit - if someone's put off buying the CD by the cover then their interest is pretty shallow in the first place. As Alan says, Rott has become a "name", and isn't that mostly down to his connection with Mahler and the continuing worship of him? Rott's seen as a sort of proto-Mahler. The Symphony itself is pretty flimsy piece of work anyway, although I'll grant that it has it's moments, and moments which could have become "moments" if Rott had had the technique and, more importantly, inspiration to make more of them, but at best it's a curate's egg. It's more interesting for what it might have been than for what it actually is and, as Hurwitz points out in his inimitable way, it's the best of Rott.
Like Gareth, I have never been put off buying a CD by its cover artwork; equally, though, some covers just make me wince. This one included.
I have almost every nineteenth century symphony on vinyl or CD, but I draw the line at Rott. I have, in the words of Charles II, tried his Symphony drunk, and I have tried it sober, and there is nothing, or nearly nothing, in it. Moments like its start,yes, but the Emperor has no clothes. Neither it, nor this new CD, will feature in my collection
I'd say that was unduly harsh - it's hard not to be thrilled by its grandiloquence and amazed by its foretastes of Mahler, but we must remember that it's essentially an apprentice work of a never-to-be mature composer.
I find some of his chamber music worth hearing but haven't heard much of it. Not going to be found in this series, though.
Rott (in particular the Gerhard Samuel recording of the symphony) was my gateway drug to the "unsungs" way back in the 1990s, so I have quite a bit of nostalgic fondness for it. In short: love the last movement, not stunned about the rest. Construction is its (and generally) Rott's main weakness, I'd say. He's got a good sense of melody but it is rather let down by form. On the basis of what we have, it's really difficult to guess whether we're dealing with a lost genius (often-claimed) or an overrated, second-tier composer (seen that too). Or something inbetween.
Rott belongs in a special category, I think. He obviously had remarkable foresight, but died much too young for us to know how to categorise him. A bit like Arriaga or Burgmüller, maybe?
Personally, judged on what they actually left behind them, I'd put both those earlier composers on a significantly higher plane than Rott, but such judgements are so subjective.
Indeed,Mark. My views on Rott are highly subjective and I recognise that there are many eminent music lovers who value him (just as there are a number for Felix Draesecke, whom I am put off for life, and can´t help thinking Liszt was so right in his judgement). For my part, Arriaga´s Symphony is a gem of originality and urgency and the Piano Concerto and First Symphony of Norbert Burgmuller are much on a par. But I cannot,even as I type, get the near-masterpiece that is Burgmuller´s unfinished Second out of my head. Poignant and haunting and fully justifying Schumann´s econiums.
Quotejust as there are a number for Felix Draesecke, whom I am put off for life
Draeseke's irrelevant here, surely. We're talking about short-lived composers - in other words, the 'might-have-beens' of musical history.
Incidentally, Liszt had a high opinion of Draeseke:
<<Liszt himself considered Draeseke's 1867 C sharp minor Sonata the most important work of the genre 'since Schumann's F sharp minor Sonata'...>>
https://www.classical-music.com/reviews/instrumental/draesekeliszt/
<<Dubbed a "giant" by Franz Liszt, Felix Draeseke was one of the leading composers of the new-German school>>
https://www.draeseke.org/
And with that, back to Rott...
Before returning to Rott, didn´t Liszt revise his opinion of Draesecke and say something along the lines of: The lion has become a rabbit. ?
"dem Löwen sei ein Kaninchen geworden" as someone paraphrased it, in regards Draeseke's B minor requiem. Should go in another thread.
This simply reflected Draeseke's later development as a composer: while retaining a propensity to push boundaries in a distinctly New German direction, he reverted to classical forms (symphony, chamber music, etc.) which were anathema to Liszt. This was not so much a verdict on the quality of his music as a rejection of the trajectory he later took. In other words, according to Liszt, a true 'Löwe' (lion) should have followed a more revolutionary path...
Anyway, let's return to Rott.