Robert Schumann’s four symphonies have experienced many approaches in concert or on recordings: for example with heavy, urgent pathos and an unconditional will to escalate in Wilhelm Furtwängler or with the appropriate, albeit little poetic angularity in Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The Spanish conductor, highly experienced in historically oriented performance practice Pablo Heras Casado has with the Munich Philharmonic in Schumann’s symphonies brilliantly unfolded their witty eloquence, their poetic expressiveness and their melodic and thematic variety. Of course, Heras-Casado does not rely on an armored full orchestra, but has reduced the number of musicians to such an extent that the overall sound remains tense, springy and structured even in fortissimo. The slow movements thus become, as it were, melodic islands of wondrous inwardness. In the three solo concerts with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the violinist Isabelle Faust, the pianist Alexander Melnikow and the cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, Heras-Casado has already proven that Heras-Casado illuminates Schumann’s intricate polyphony and rhythmically accentuates the musical process. The Munich Philharmonic is also a Heras-Casado ensemble, so powerful, sinewy and without false impact they explore these grandiose pieces. (harmonia mundi)
Emilie Mayer 3rd and 6th symphony with Marc Niemann and Phil.Orchester Bremerhaven, hänssler classics (0881488220162.jpg)
Only two years younger than Schumann was born in Friedland, Mecklenburg, in 1812 Emily Mayer was born, who was one of the first women to achieve considerable success as a composer during her lifetime. She was even celebrated as a “female Beethoven”, who not only limited herself to songs and a rich chamber music composition, but also pushed the public with symphonies and other orchestral music. However, after her death in Berlin in 1883, she and her work fell into oblivion. In the meantime, research has made some things accessible again and Emilie Mayer’s music is quite rightly experiencing increasing interest again. The 3rd and 6th symphonies have Marc Niemann and the Philharmonic Orchestra Bremerhaven recorded. Certainly there are echoes of great role models such as Joseph Haydn. But Mayer is independent with her rabidly concise thematic ideas and a continuation art that does not so much harmoniously interweave as rather “assembles”. Contrasts are placed directly next to each other, and even the funeral march from the 6th symphony seems to falter again and again in order to be pushed again. The finale of the 3rd symphony lives itself out happily in military music gestures. (haenssler classics)
The Korean cellist Gulrim Choi is also eager to discover. Together with the Ensemble Diderot under Johannes Pramsoller, she went in search of North German cello concertos. North German concerts? Well, it’s easy to forget that excellent musicians and instrumentalists were also active at the courts in Berlin, Schwerin, Köthen and others north of the Main, not just Mount Everest Johann Sebastian Bach. One of them at the court of Frederick the Great was Ignac Mara (1709-1783), whose son heard the legendary “Mara” Stradivaricello. His C major concerto, recorded here for the first time, sounds accomplished and knows how to use the natural singing ability of the cello well in the Adagio with an expressive melody. However, it is noticeable that the high regions of the cello are hardly ever used. this also applies to the concerts by Markus Heinrich Grauel (1720-1799) or Johann Wilhelm Hertel (1727-1789). But in Carl Friedrich Abel’s B flat major concerto, all the registers of the cello can be heard. Abel (1723-1787) was considered the last great gamba virtuoso in Europe. His lovable cello concerto also draws on this. (Audax Records)
When composers like Frédéric Chopin and Sergei Rachmaninoff write cello sonatas, one can be sure that, despite all cello seriousness and bliss, the piano will set the roaring, virtuosically sparkling or powerfully chordal tone. You can do the same with the great ones Alexander Melnikov and Jean Guihen Queyras perceive. But Melnikov uses a transparent-sounding Erard grand piano from the Chopin era for Chopin and an early Steinway for Rachmaninoff. Despite all the pianistic bravura, nothing is plastered over, also because such a fantastic cellist as Queyras takes up the fight against the supremacy of the piano so confidently and agilely, singing so wonderfully and energetically. So you can experience two chamber music masterpieces in a brilliant manner. (harmonia mundi)