wimpel69
06-05-2014, 01:37 PM
"It is completely impossible to estimate what music has lost in him. His genius soars
to such heights even in his first symphony, written at the age of twenty, and which
makes him - without exaggeration - the founder of the new symphony as I understand it."
(Gustav Mahler)
Hans Rott composed the first movement of his Symphony in E when he was 19 -
two years prior to the other movements. Whereas the motif and theme of this work were treated
in a truly remarkable but to some extent rather simple manner, the other movements reveal that
they have been written by a more experienced composer. Besides we have to take into
consideration that Rott, with regard to the composition competition of July 2, 1878, worked
under time pressure - he composed the first movement in 1 1/2 months, at the most.
Yet the jury members who had to judge the accepted works did not find fault with the technical
value of the movement presented by Rott. They were rather irritated by distinct reminiscences
of Richard Wagner; Rott's work failed. Yet it has to be mentioned that some characteristics,
typical for Mahler's work, are clearly to be found in this Symphony, such as "bird calls" or
"music from another world". This correspondence is best revealed by the Scherzo: It brims with
stereotypes from waltzes and l�ndlers and anticipates in a stimulating way Mahler's technique
of exploiting such models. But this is not enough: Mahler quotes from this movement in the
third movements of his Second and Fifth Symphony.
The Symphony is (not yet) a mature masterpiece. Rott was no prodigy which is
sometimes revealed in the lack of experience as to composition as well as to instrumentation.
If he had had a chance he certainly would have revised his Symphony in later years.
But another thing becomes equally obvious: Rott had not only been very ambitious, he also
had an extraordinary musical imagination and he did not shrink from disregarding conventions
if he considered it necessary.
This album, along with the best recorded version of Rott's Symphony available, also
includes two reconstructed movements from a planned Suite for Orchestra.
The sharing period for the FLAC version has ended. No more requests, and no re-ups, please. Thank you!
Music Composed by Hans Rott
Played by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Paavo J�rvi
"The Symphony by the unfortunate and short-lived Hans Rott (1858-1884) didn’t get its first
performance until more than a century after its completion in 1880; but unlike so many similar
rediscoveries, it is more than a curiosity and has not sunk again into oblivion. No, it’s not a
concert favorite, and is unlikely to be. But it has done surprisingly well on CD: This is at least
the sixth recording since Gerhard Samuel’s pioneering account with the Cincinnati Philharmonia,
the crackerjack student orchestra from the University of Cincinnati that premiered the work.
Granted, Rott’s magnum opus has come in for more than its share of criticism. While its
foreshadowings of Mahler are widely recognized (including by Mahler himself, who famously
dubbed Rott “the founder of the New Symphony”), a few naysayers have insisted that we find
similarities simply because, as Tony Haywood put it in a review of the Dennis Russell Davies
recording on MusicWeb-International , Rott was “a talented composer coming from the same
‘stable’ as Mahler, and sharing the same tradition and lofty ideals as to how symphonic form
should progress.” (David Johnson, who likes the symphony quite a bit, and whose excellent
review of the first recording in Fanfare 13:4 gives an informative account of the piece and
its history, makes a similar claim. The Mahlerian moments, he says, “are best explained
precisely as Mahler explained them: both men were nourished by the same Zeitgeist .”)
Some have been put off by the work’s apparent awkwardness—Rott never did get a chance
to hear it, much less revise it, and in places it shows. David Hurwitz, writing in Classics
Today , sniped “whether or not Rott did some of these things first hardly matters
because everyone else did them better.”
So what does it sound like? Does it really sound like Mahler? Depends on what you mean
by “like Mahler.” Certainly, the thematic premonitions of Mahler’s scores are hard to
ignore—not only the first two symphonies but the Fifth as well, especially in the third
movement. On the other hand, in terms of color and surface spirit, it’s not especially
Mahlerian, except in the Scherzo, which, had it been written after the Mahler First,
would surely be accused of plagiarism. And yet, on a deeper and more abstract level,
the work looks ahead to the Mahler of the Seventh—not so much in its colors or its
specific gestures and harmonies, but in terms of its formal, harmonic, and rhythmic
dislocations, dislocations that are doubly effective because, on the thematic level,
the work is so carefully unified.
Yes, the symphony looks back as well as forward: As we might expect of a young
Bruckner pupil writing at the time, there are lots of reminiscences of Bruckner,
Wagner, and the early German Romantics. Many—allegedly including even Brahms
himself—perceive a lot of Brahms in the finale, too. It doesn’t sound that way to
me: Despite the thematic nod to the finale of the Brahms First—actually, less glaring
than Mahler’s borrowing at the opening of his Third—the voice is pretty far from
Brahmsian. But in any case, the moments of late-Romantic lingua franca are
overwhelmed by Rott’s willingness to go against the grain, to shift direction, to
throw in the unexpected gesture, to engage extreme dynamic surprise—and his
willingness to push his ideas to the limit. There are a few moments in the first
movement that briefly look ahead to the Ives Second—leading us to wonder in
what directions his talent might have led him. Not a symphony for those who
like their music well mannered, perhaps: But for all its immaturity, it’s a heady
work of real genius.
Until now, the Samuel and Leif Segerstam recordings have been widely
considered the frontrunners in this symphony. Of the two, I’ve always preferred
the Samuel—to my ears, Segerstam’s weighty and Brucknerian version buries
Rott’s quirky spirit and exaggerates his redundancies. But Paavo J�rvi’s performance
tops them both, catching the music’s quicksilver with unmatched dexterity. His
tempos are fast, yet in his hands, Rott never sounds rushed. Exuberant, yes,
and youthful, and extroverted, and (considering the misery of his life) bizarrely
self-confident; but never rushed. To add to the pleasures of the disc, the
orchestra plays not only with panache, but with sensitivity as well (try the
treatment of the distant chorale at the end of the second movement).
RCA’s release is made all the more welcome by the inclusion, in a performance
edition by Johannes Volker Schmidt, of the two more-or-less extant movements
from a planned four-movement Suite, composed even before the symphony.
The richly contrapuntal conclusion (apparently marked simply “Last Movement”
in the score) is especially effective: Heard out of context, you might momentarily
think of Reger, except that Rott has a kind of zip that Reger rarely attained.
A welcome addition to the catalog."
Fanfare
Source: Sony/RCA CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320 CBR)
File Sizes: 322 MB / 136 MB (FLAC version incl. complete artwork, log & cue)
mp3 version - https://mega.co.nz/#!Xh4RgLbY!ineXcEaC0-_9ZrsR2TT6iHA29Y9UKbC8H3C8pR74waI
The sharing period for the FLAC version has ended. No more requests, and no re-ups, please. Thank you!
Enjoy! Don't share! Buy the original! :)
to such heights even in his first symphony, written at the age of twenty, and which
makes him - without exaggeration - the founder of the new symphony as I understand it."
(Gustav Mahler)
Hans Rott composed the first movement of his Symphony in E when he was 19 -
two years prior to the other movements. Whereas the motif and theme of this work were treated
in a truly remarkable but to some extent rather simple manner, the other movements reveal that
they have been written by a more experienced composer. Besides we have to take into
consideration that Rott, with regard to the composition competition of July 2, 1878, worked
under time pressure - he composed the first movement in 1 1/2 months, at the most.
Yet the jury members who had to judge the accepted works did not find fault with the technical
value of the movement presented by Rott. They were rather irritated by distinct reminiscences
of Richard Wagner; Rott's work failed. Yet it has to be mentioned that some characteristics,
typical for Mahler's work, are clearly to be found in this Symphony, such as "bird calls" or
"music from another world". This correspondence is best revealed by the Scherzo: It brims with
stereotypes from waltzes and l�ndlers and anticipates in a stimulating way Mahler's technique
of exploiting such models. But this is not enough: Mahler quotes from this movement in the
third movements of his Second and Fifth Symphony.
The Symphony is (not yet) a mature masterpiece. Rott was no prodigy which is
sometimes revealed in the lack of experience as to composition as well as to instrumentation.
If he had had a chance he certainly would have revised his Symphony in later years.
But another thing becomes equally obvious: Rott had not only been very ambitious, he also
had an extraordinary musical imagination and he did not shrink from disregarding conventions
if he considered it necessary.
This album, along with the best recorded version of Rott's Symphony available, also
includes two reconstructed movements from a planned Suite for Orchestra.
The sharing period for the FLAC version has ended. No more requests, and no re-ups, please. Thank you!
Music Composed by Hans Rott
Played by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by Paavo J�rvi
"The Symphony by the unfortunate and short-lived Hans Rott (1858-1884) didn’t get its first
performance until more than a century after its completion in 1880; but unlike so many similar
rediscoveries, it is more than a curiosity and has not sunk again into oblivion. No, it’s not a
concert favorite, and is unlikely to be. But it has done surprisingly well on CD: This is at least
the sixth recording since Gerhard Samuel’s pioneering account with the Cincinnati Philharmonia,
the crackerjack student orchestra from the University of Cincinnati that premiered the work.
Granted, Rott’s magnum opus has come in for more than its share of criticism. While its
foreshadowings of Mahler are widely recognized (including by Mahler himself, who famously
dubbed Rott “the founder of the New Symphony”), a few naysayers have insisted that we find
similarities simply because, as Tony Haywood put it in a review of the Dennis Russell Davies
recording on MusicWeb-International , Rott was “a talented composer coming from the same
‘stable’ as Mahler, and sharing the same tradition and lofty ideals as to how symphonic form
should progress.” (David Johnson, who likes the symphony quite a bit, and whose excellent
review of the first recording in Fanfare 13:4 gives an informative account of the piece and
its history, makes a similar claim. The Mahlerian moments, he says, “are best explained
precisely as Mahler explained them: both men were nourished by the same Zeitgeist .”)
Some have been put off by the work’s apparent awkwardness—Rott never did get a chance
to hear it, much less revise it, and in places it shows. David Hurwitz, writing in Classics
Today , sniped “whether or not Rott did some of these things first hardly matters
because everyone else did them better.”
So what does it sound like? Does it really sound like Mahler? Depends on what you mean
by “like Mahler.” Certainly, the thematic premonitions of Mahler’s scores are hard to
ignore—not only the first two symphonies but the Fifth as well, especially in the third
movement. On the other hand, in terms of color and surface spirit, it’s not especially
Mahlerian, except in the Scherzo, which, had it been written after the Mahler First,
would surely be accused of plagiarism. And yet, on a deeper and more abstract level,
the work looks ahead to the Mahler of the Seventh—not so much in its colors or its
specific gestures and harmonies, but in terms of its formal, harmonic, and rhythmic
dislocations, dislocations that are doubly effective because, on the thematic level,
the work is so carefully unified.
Yes, the symphony looks back as well as forward: As we might expect of a young
Bruckner pupil writing at the time, there are lots of reminiscences of Bruckner,
Wagner, and the early German Romantics. Many—allegedly including even Brahms
himself—perceive a lot of Brahms in the finale, too. It doesn’t sound that way to
me: Despite the thematic nod to the finale of the Brahms First—actually, less glaring
than Mahler’s borrowing at the opening of his Third—the voice is pretty far from
Brahmsian. But in any case, the moments of late-Romantic lingua franca are
overwhelmed by Rott’s willingness to go against the grain, to shift direction, to
throw in the unexpected gesture, to engage extreme dynamic surprise—and his
willingness to push his ideas to the limit. There are a few moments in the first
movement that briefly look ahead to the Ives Second—leading us to wonder in
what directions his talent might have led him. Not a symphony for those who
like their music well mannered, perhaps: But for all its immaturity, it’s a heady
work of real genius.
Until now, the Samuel and Leif Segerstam recordings have been widely
considered the frontrunners in this symphony. Of the two, I’ve always preferred
the Samuel—to my ears, Segerstam’s weighty and Brucknerian version buries
Rott’s quirky spirit and exaggerates his redundancies. But Paavo J�rvi’s performance
tops them both, catching the music’s quicksilver with unmatched dexterity. His
tempos are fast, yet in his hands, Rott never sounds rushed. Exuberant, yes,
and youthful, and extroverted, and (considering the misery of his life) bizarrely
self-confident; but never rushed. To add to the pleasures of the disc, the
orchestra plays not only with panache, but with sensitivity as well (try the
treatment of the distant chorale at the end of the second movement).
RCA’s release is made all the more welcome by the inclusion, in a performance
edition by Johannes Volker Schmidt, of the two more-or-less extant movements
from a planned four-movement Suite, composed even before the symphony.
The richly contrapuntal conclusion (apparently marked simply “Last Movement”
in the score) is especially effective: Heard out of context, you might momentarily
think of Reger, except that Rott has a kind of zip that Reger rarely attained.
A welcome addition to the catalog."
Fanfare
Source: Sony/RCA CD (my rip!)
Formats: FLAC(RAR), DDD Stereo, mp3(320 CBR)
File Sizes: 322 MB / 136 MB (FLAC version incl. complete artwork, log & cue)
mp3 version - https://mega.co.nz/#!Xh4RgLbY!ineXcEaC0-_9ZrsR2TT6iHA29Y9UKbC8H3C8pR74waI
The sharing period for the FLAC version has ended. No more requests, and no re-ups, please. Thank you!
Enjoy! Don't share! Buy the original! :)