Cartellieri: Complete Symphonies 1-4

Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, Schmalfuss, Gernot

CPO 777 667-2

Little is known about the circumstances of Antonio Cartellieri's life. He was born more or less by chance in Gdansk to an Italian father and a German mother who were traveling vocalists, and he spent his formative years in Berlin and Vienna. As a pupil of Salieri and Albrechtsberger in Vienna, he quickly launched his career and in 1796 obtained a post as court music director to Prince Lobkowitz, an avid patron of music and the theater and a great promoter of Beethoven. Incidentally, it was on the occasion of the performance of Cartellieri's oratorio Gioas that Beethoven first appeared as a pianist and composer in Vienna. Cartellieri's music bears the audible mark of Beethoven's influence but very much displays early romantic influences of its own. We have Dieter Klöcker and Gernot Schmalfuss, the conductor of the present recording, to thank for the rediscovery of his symphonies. After a manuscript catalogue of Cartellieri's works had revealed that he had composed four symphonies, only two of which initially had been found, the two friends were able to locate the missing works in a place that hardly would have been suspected and did so with just as much sleuthing instinct as exact tracing of clues. Voilà: here they are on cpo!

CD

26.06.2012

761203766727