Here we are offering you our Gouvy edition featuring this Franco-German composer’s symphonic works in a complete box set at a special low price.

Théodore Gouvy was born in 1819 as a Prussian citizen in a suburb of Saarbrucken, then named Goffontaine (today’s Scheidt-Schafbrücke). His later artistic career moved back and forth between the poles of Germany and France. When Gouvy died in 1898, he was regarded as a Frenchman in Germany and as a German in France. No other foreign composer’s works were performed as frequently in Leipzig during the 1850s as those by Gouvy.

The influence of the Allemands in France may have been one factor behind his decision to dedicate himself to the typically German genre of the symphony (and later to chamber music). In his symphonic oeuvre Gouvy displays the characteristic bravura and clarté that his contemporaries valued in his music.

“Melodic richness, natural sovereignty in the treatment of harmony, and a completely unaffected originality make Gouvy’s music perfect listening pleasure. The German Radio Philharmonic plays with fine nuances under Jacques Mercier of Lorraine, and the recordings are also tonally convincing” - klassik-heute.com (January 2012)