Into every critic’s life a little Schmidt must fall
Album Of The WeekFrom the Lebrecht Album of the Week:
Into every musical life, a little Schmidt must fall. I cannot count the conductors who have tried to persuade me that the Viennese cellist Franz Schmidt belongs among the ranks of great composers, or the number of hours I have devoted to attempts to understand their devotion. In vain. Once I’m over admiring the brilliance of the scoring, what then?…
Read on here.
And here.
En francais ici.
Schmidt is a tough nut to crack for many (including myself). I find his late piano (left hand) quintet in A, the last of several works he wrote for Paul Wittgenstein, to be my favorite. Note that Schmidt never finished his post-Anschluss “German Resurrection” cantata, dropping it in favor of writing the quintet for Wittgenstein (who was classified as Jewish by the Nuremberg Laws).
One of the fascinating things about the classical music world is how people respond differently to the same music. I love the Schmidt symphonies dearly and I’m not a conductor! The Fourth has been a constant companion since I first heard it in the Mehta recording. I’ve traveled far and wide to hear his music performed live; it was the Second Symphony as done by the Vienna Philharmonic that got me to the London Proms years ago. His monumental Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln I’ve caught in Cleveland, Dallas and New York. I firmly believe that Schmidt was the last great symphonist in the Austrian/German tradition starting with Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven-Schubert-Brahms-Mahler. His music has a nobility and seriousness that get under my skin and I can’t shake it. His symphonies are life-affirming, beautiful and powerful and their absence from our concert halls is a shame. But I’m not naive, not everyone responds to his music just as I can’t appreciate the music of Weinberg, Mozart, or any of the Second Viennese School. For what it’s worth, that Naxos set isn’t the most thrilling or even best recorded. There are much better versions of all four symphonies made by Neeme an Paavo J and Fabio Luisi.
Agreed on all points except that I dislike the Mehta Fourth; the Ondrej Lenárd set of symphonies is well worth hearing. The Hussar Variations are well worth hearing and the two clarinet quintets are wonderful works.
Ondrej Lenard? Or do you mean Ludovit Rajter? The first complete cycle on Opus? Between the sluggish tempos and the sometimes poor orchestral playing I set that cycle aside a long time ago. The Mehta was the one that most of us first got to know the 4th from, but it has been eclipsed by several – those I mentioned but most of all Martin Sieghardt with the Linz Bruckner Orchestra. I sure hope the BBC lets the Sir John Pritchard recording out sometime.
Sorry, yes – Rajter. Senior moment.
Schmidt’s symphonic works are introvert and serious, and fanatically traditional. Who would want to write such thing as a contemporary of Mahler, Schönberg, Strauss, etc.? He was ‘eclipsed’ by what was considered ‘modern’ at the time although he fitted OK with the later Strauss. There was also Walter Braunfels who ploughed the German symphonic tradition in a comparable way, who was forgotten for the same reason but revived much later, especially with his opera ‘Die Vögel’.
As a digression, to those who are unacquainted with Walter Braunfels’ music, allow me to suggest you hear his Präludium und Fugue für großes Orchester. It is riveting.
What an eloquent tribute, JB. Regarding Schmidt, I’m with you every inch of the way!
I’d add to the list the orchestral Variations on a Hussar Theme, the G major Quintet for Piano and Strings, ‘Notre Dame’ and the String Quartets. The first work that came my way was the second quartet, when I was a teenager. At the time, I was rather defeated by the intense chromaticism, but eventually warmed to it. But the next encounter was with the Mehta LP recording of the Fourth Symphony, with that glorious portrait on the cover. I was stunned by the work and became an ardent Schmidt fan from then on.
Yes, musical taste is entirely personal and NL has a different view – but whose heart could remain cold to the Intermezzo from ‘Notre Dame’?
It´s better than Mahler. Less sentimental, ridiculously overblown, better orchestrated. And far more honest.
Never trust a professional musician who has no clue about Mahler.
I hugely enjoy his two string quartets. It is as though with each movement he tips his hat to Haydn, Schubert etc.
It’s Schmidt’s linear vocabulary that makes him so distinctive. While he writes within the prevailing style of that time, his primary influence is clearly Bach. There is a constant contrapuntal movement based on whatever motives derived for the work at hand, and that lends his music an immensely satisfactory sense of development. He is also masterful at shaping his arches so that culmination always seems inexorable. Like all great composers, he took what was left to him by previous composers and fashioned a voice that is at once very personal and yet familiar.
Schmidt is also a very modern composer. If you played one of the last three symphonies at the piano you will hear how deftly his harmonic vocabulary integrates dissonance among his orderly voice-leading. It is his masterly orchestration that softens the sharp edges of this dissonance.
To me, Schmidt is the very definition of a great composer.
From: Richard Stanbrook.
Date: 27th October 2024.
It would be good to hear a cycle of Franz Schmidt’s orchestral works presented at next year’s Proms season. How about it, BBC?
I completely agree with you, but even now it may be too late to plan that; I suppose we could hope, unlikely as it is, that bands already booked up will decide to play Schmidt rather than the usual more obvious, “safe” repertoire.
I have to agree, Schmidt is like a cloudy Bruckner….he’s Viennese but has not an inch of Viennese charm.
There wasn’t much charm about 1920s/30s Vienna.
Which is entirely true – listen to Alban Berg:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROcFQGmG1cI&t=15s
I’m surprised that there isn’t more in the comments about ‘The Book with the Seven Seals’. I think of it as the last masterpiece of the Austro-German tradition that began with Bach, if not before. The oratorio sounds as if Schmidt knew intimately that entire tradition, as I always hear bits that are clearly indebted to Bach and even Mendelssohn. Yet Schmidt has a unique and personal voice. There is nothing of the academic dryness, that I, frankly, hear in some of his other music. The oratorio has an anti-war message as powerful as Britten’s in the War Requiem, like which it sometimes sounds, but Schmidt’s work is even more remarkable because of the time, right around the Anschluss, when it was written.