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Schmidt - Das Buch Mit Sieben Siegeln

£18.15

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Label: Chandos

Cat No: CHSA50612

Barcode: 0095115506127

Format: Hybrid SACD

Number of Discs: 2

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 3rd March 2008

Works

Schmidt, Franz

Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book of Seven Seals)

Artists

Johannes Chum (tenor)
Robert Holl (bass baritone)
Sandra Trattnigg (soprano)
Michelle Breedt (mezzo-soprano)
Nikolai Schukoff (tenor)
Manfred Hemm (bass)
Robert Kovacs (organ)
Wiener Singverein
Tonkunstler Orchester Niederosterreich

Conductor

Kristjan Jarvi

Works

Schmidt, Franz

Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln (The Book of Seven Seals)

Artists

Conductor

Kristjan Jarvi

About

Seen by many as Franz Scmidt’s greatest work, Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln ambitiously sets one of the most challenging texts, the Book of Revelation, to music. In his programme notes for the first performance of Das Buch, he commented on the mammoth challenge of setting the entire Apocalypse to music and said his priority ‘was to bring the text into a form which retained everything important, wherever possible in the original wording, and yet reduce the immense dimensions of the work to a point where they could be grasped by ordinary human brains.’ The result is this magnificent oratorio, here performed by the Tonkünstler Orchestra and starring Dutch bass-baritone Robert Holl, who has almost become synonymous with the role it is so much his own.

Schmidt composed his oratorio Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln in 1935-7, when Schmidt’s health was quickly failing and with a particularly keen sense of his own mortality. The composition wittingly or unwittingly seems to tap into the feelings of the time, and his apocalyptic visions soon became realities.

It was written at a time when the opposite poles of contemporary music were represented by the internationally renowned music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Their pioneering styles seemed at the time to be mutually exclusive and left little room for those who did not obviously adhere to one camp or the other.

Sadly, Schmidt’s music seemed a highly conservative continuation of an outmoded romanticism, greatly influenced by his teachers Bruckner and Fuchs and his Hungarian origins. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, it is precisely Schmidt’s refusal to pander to modernistic trends that endows his distinctive contribution to twentieth-century music with a refreshing integrity and individuality and Das Buch is now, justifiably, seen as one of the greatest epic works of the Twentieth Century.

The Tonkünstler Orchestra is one of the most important institutions of Austrian musical culture, exploring not only repertoire based on almost a hundred years of history, but also exploring new or unfamiliar works from the past three centuries under its principal conductor, Kristjan Järvi.