Gernsheim: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4

Bäumer, Hermann, Gernsheim, Friedrich, Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Mainz

CPO 777 848-2

Following the release of Friedrich Gernsheim's Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 so rich in dramatic romanticism, we do not want to keep you waiting any longer for his Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4. Some passages of this new CD may move many a listener to ask: Is that by Brahms? But then the music goes on to develop a different sound all of its own that is always originally orchestrated and precisely formulated compositionally. It is by a wrongly forgotten composer from the Nibelungen city of Worms who has come to be regarded as one of the important romantic symphonists after Mendelssohn and Schumann and from the era of Bruckner and Brahms. The Symphony op. 46 premiered by Gernsheim himself in Rotterdam on 16 March 1882 returns to a compressed musical language. In some passages – and especially in the horn sound of the first movement – it seems to reflect Brahms's second symphony. As a whole, however, this work is a highly individual composition. Gernsheim composed his fourth and last Symphony op. 62 in Berlin in 1895. Of all his symphonies, it is the one that calls for the largest ensemble, with an English horn (Bass) clarinet, tuba, and cymbals in addition to the usual orchestra of the nineteenth century. In some sections – especially in the first movement – this work creates the impression of a continuation of the second symphony while mixing relaxed and orchestrally thinned-out passages with energetic tuttis. Woodwind solos and catchy string cantilenas mark the music here as well; the middle segment (development section) again displays Gernsheim's excellence as a symphonist. As the musicologist Dietrich Kämper stated in MGG in 2002, here Gernsheim exhibits his »consummate command of the compositional means« without »artistic sterility.«

CD

CPO

3.06.2016

761203784820