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Hans Rott - Balde Ruhest du Auch!

£11.38

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Label: Oehms

Cat No: OC1803

Barcode: 4260330918031

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Release Date: 28th July 2014

Works

Rott, Hans

Lieder-Reise (Journey of Songs) for baritone and orchestra (orch. Enjott Schneider)
Symphony in E major

Artists

Michael Volle (baritone)
Munchner Symphoniker

Conductor

Hansjorg Albrecht

Works

Rott, Hans

Lieder-Reise (Journey of Songs) for baritone and orchestra (orch. Enjott Schneider)
Symphony in E major

Artists

Michael Volle (baritone)
Munchner Symphoniker

Conductor

Hansjorg Albrecht

About

With musical commentaries (Prologue, Interludes, Epilogue in a contemporary idiom), Enjott Schneider leads us through Hans Rott's Lieder with piano accompaniment – works which are primarily noted for their longing for death and withdrawal from the world. They have been meticulously orchestrated and are intended to remain unaltered in their original expression.

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The Europadisc Review

A student of Bruckner's in Vienna, Hans Rott (1858–1884) was a promising composer whose music was looked on with scorn by his superiors, and he died at the age of 25 following a mental breakdown and prolonged period of depression. We might never have heard of him or his music had it not been for the palpable influence he subsequently had on his friend and close contemporary Gustav Mahler. Mahler himself wrote of Rott in 1900: 'It is completely impossible to estimate what music has lost in him. His First Symphony soars to such heights of genius that it makes him – without exaggeration – the founder of the New Symphony as I understand it. His innermost nature is so much akin to mine that he and I are like two fruits from the same tree, produced by the same soil, nourished by the same air. We would have had an infinite amount in common.' The reappearance of several ideas from Rott's E major Symphony in Mahler's own Second, Third, Fifth and Seventh Symphonies reinforces this glowing tribute.

It was not until the a century after Rott's death – and some determined detective work by musicologist Paul Banks – that Rott's Symphony was brought to long overdue public light. First recorded by Gerhard Samuel and the Cincinnati Philharmonia (a capable student orchestra from the University of Cincinnati) on Hyperion in 1989, it has steadily won admirers among audiences and musicians. This new disc from Hansjörg Albrecht and the Munich Symphony Orchestra brings the tally of recordings to ten: an impressive total given Rott's relative obscurity, and a tribute to this music's forward-looking late-Romantic appeal as much as its influence on his more famous friend.

The Munich Symphony Orchestra may be the least well-known of Munich's professional orchestras (much of its time is spent recording movie soundtracks), but here they turn in a performance of passionate commitment and wide dynamic range, the music lovingly shaped without being over-moulded. This is one of the most natural-sounding accounts the Symphony has had on disc, and the middle movements – the ones which had a particularly strong influence on Mahler – are especially successful, the slow movement beautifully poised but giving way to feelings of intense angst, the wide-ranging Scherzo splendidly animated.

What makes this new disc of added interest is the generous coupling: an arrangement and orchestration of five of Rott's songs by German composer Enjott Schneider (born in 1950). Originally composed for voice and piano to texts by Goethe and Zusner, they are imaginatively re-scored, and framed and linked by a series of short intermezzi in a sympathetically modernist idiom, contrasting nicely but never glaringly with Rott's own late-Romantic soundworld. The songs themselves are sung with superb sensitivity by baritone Michael Volle, making this a very attractive release indeed.

If you don't already know Rott's Symphony, you really should try this; and if you already do, you'll no doubt want to add this to your collection, not least to explore the songs.