Want List for Henry Fogel [2010]

Franz Schmidt’s Second Symphony is one of his greatest works, and it receives its most convincing recorded performance yet with Vassily Sinaisky. Sinaisky gets the difficult balances and textures just right, and also the right mixture of long and supple line and rhythmic tautness.

The work is a compositional wonder where Schmidt takes a musical theme and plays with it through three movements and 49 minutes. The most beautiful is the middle movement, which is, essentially a theme and variations that leaves no instrument in the orchestra unattended.

Sinaisky and his orchestra give a gorgeously rich and measured interpretation that does full justice to a complex orchestration…

Organist Anders Johnsson does a wonderful job with this technically challenging piece…

The recording is full-bodied, with plenty of detail. In fact, just for kicks, I gave it a spin on a boom-box; and even there it sounded terrific. Add the meaty coupler, and at full price this release would be a contender. At a budget price, the decision makes itself.

To read the complete review, please visit American Record Guide online.

Naxos provides very informative and intelligent notes, and a well-balanced, clean recording. This is an early Want List candidate for me.

SCHMIDT, F.: Symphony No. 1 / Notre Dame, Act I: Introduction, Interlude and Carnival Music (Malmo Symphony, Sinaisky) 8.570828
SCHMIDT, F.: Symphony No. 2 / Fuga Solemnis (Malmo Symphony, Sinaisky) 8.570589

A big round of applause should also go to organist Anders Johnsson as well as the MSO brass and percussion sections for their stirring account of the Fuga Solemnis. We owe them and Naxos thanks for providing us with the only recording of this rarity currently available on disc.

The organ begins its nobly reserved soliloquy whilst the orchestral forces are only allowed to enter with their stirring blocks of sound at around the mid-point of its 14 minute length. Again a stirring climax is ensured by Schmidt and whilst this one sounds a touch forced, its impact can’t be doubted.

Once again these forces prove to be fully conversant with Schmidt’s own personalised brand of late-romanticism, and its allied harmonic richness. The results are admirably bracing and sympathetic, and have been excellently recorded by the Naxos team.

Austrian composer Franz Schmidt’s music might remind you a little of his elders, Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss—but it’s less neurotically charged than the former, less chromatic and slithery than the latter. This massive Symphony No. 2 begins in a pastoral vein, though the long first movement eventually turns dramatic. A complex, often jaunty set of variations follows, then a finale built on a majestic chorale tune.

Vladimir Sinaisky’s Malmö Symphony Orchestra may not have a big reputation, but it plays superbly, and the forceful sound is a plus.

A splendid second instalment to Sinaisky’s Schmidt symphony series

Sinaisky and the Malmö Symphony get into the swing of Schmidt’s freewheeling invention and with a splendid recording from Naxos…at budget price this is self-recommending. The price edges them past Fabio Luisi on Querstand (not the easiest label to track down) and there is the added bonus of the late, celebratory Fuga solemnis for organ, brass and percussion (1937), written to inaugurate a new instrument in Vienna. Even if one has the symphony already, I urge you to try this newcomer. One cannot have too much Schmidt.

Schmidt, a fine but neglected composer, builds the symphony around a single basic theme that is stated by violins and clarinets at the start and subsequently varied, pulled apart, upended and turned inside out and every which way for nearly 50 minutes. Schmidt was fond of large orchestras, and his Symphony No. 2 uses a very big one indeed, including eight horns, a contrabass tuba, four timpani (plus bass drum and side drum), lots of percussion, and winds and strings galore. The work is in three movements—the typical form of a piano sonata, which is what Schmidt originally conceived it to be—and includes a highly impressive set of variations in the middle. This is a big work in every sense, sprawling and intense, thoroughly Romantic in sensibility, and very difficult to play (especially for the strings)…Vassily Sinaisky conducts stylishly and the players sound ardent…Also on this CD is one of the works that explains Schmidt’s modern-day neglect. Fuga Solemnis is, on its face, a fascinating piece, requiring very considerable dexterity by the organist (Anders Johnsson does a fine job) and a conductor’s ability to balance a highly unusual array of instruments: six trumpets, six horns, three trombones, tuba, timpani and tam-tam. This was Schmidt’s last organ work, completed in 1937, and shows a sure mastery of form and orchestration. Hearing it in a strictly musical context is a highly involving experience.