Gernsheim Symphonies 2 & 4

[chill319]

Just listening to Gernsheim 2 yesterday. Can't wait to hear the new recording!

[eschiss1]

I don't mean that Draeseke's symphonies are fluffy-

and now I see that the statement I was responding to,

"Well, as I said, to make them sound 'more substantial' isn't a bad achievement on Bäumer's part."

I misread quite entirely, as meaning that there's not much substance to be had in the first place (hence, "fluffy".)

Yes, definitely I am needing to sign up for that remedial reading course, as I've said before...

[Alan Howe]

Oh, misreading's easy, Eric. Not to worry...

[Alan Howe]

An appreciative review at MusicWeb is spoilt by some strange turns of phrase and superficial analysis of the music:
http://musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/Aug/Gernsheim_sys_7778482.htm
The review's wrong about the comparison with Köhler too. Oh dear.

[khorovod]

As a review it doesn't say much concrete really. Rob Barnett seems to be a nice bloke but I find his reviews really hard to read sometimes, too much purple prose as though they are written with an open thesaurus in one hand. There's no doubt he's done a lot to champion unsung music though. I like the Gernsheim symphonies but I don't think I need to buy another set, the Arte Nova ones seem like good performances to me and I don't have money to splash around.. Sadly.

[Alan Howe]

The Köhler set is perfectly fine. I prefer Bäumer, but buying his set in addition might be indulgence...

[Mark Thomas]

Rob's a good guy and generally a friend of unsungs, but I'd say that this review was written in a tearing hurry.

[chill319]

The Köhler set is perfectly fine. I prefer Bäumer, but buying his set in addition might be indulgence...

As someone who owns 23 different performances of the Schumann violin concerto in D minor, that doesn't even _begin_ to qualify as an indulgence! 

More seriously, if one values the kind of music that Gernsheim and his confreres wrote and listens to it often -- unlike Rob Barnett and Jonathan Woolf, both of whom admit that their reviews reflect first auditions -- then the more spacious, somewhat more searching account of Bäumer and the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz, especially in the slow movements, are IMHO well worth the investment.

True, Gersheim is not Bruckner nor Brahms nor even Draeseke, but he wrote superbly at the peak of one of the greatest artistic efflorescences of the last 2500 years. To quote Barnett's best sentence: "These two symphonies approach the last word in succinct expressive power ..."

[Alan Howe]

Spot-on!

[Ilja]

The cases of Gernsheim and Draeseke highlight what makes comparing composers so difficult. Comparisons seem to focus only on a composer's best (or worst) work, not so much on the entirety of his work. I will gladly admit that Draeseke at his peak ranks among the best, but when I compare his oeuvre with Gernsheim's, I see a qualitative consistenty in the latter that I don't always find in Draeseke. In other words: I've never been disappointed by one of Gernsheim's works, whereas Draeseke has brought both higher elation and deeper discontentment. Theirs are very different types of talent.


I was thinking about this when I recently listened to Louis Abbiate's Monaecencis phantasy for piano and orchestra. Here was a composer I'd dismissed for myself because of the rather long-winded and not very interesting Concerto Italien, serving up a thoroughly fun piece that I will return to. For me, this is what makes the effort to mine unsung works so valuable.

[Alan Howe]

There are very few works by Draeseke which I personally find disappointing. Christus, unfortunately, is one of them. Gernsheim may be a more even composer, but I wouldn't put much of his music on the same level as Draeseke's. What I would say is that Gernsheim is easier to like; Draeseke on the whole is much harder work.