Moritz Moszkowski - Orchestral Music Vol. 1 (Ian Hobson)

Information

Composer: Moritz Moszkowski

• Johanna d'Arc: symphonic poem in four movements, Op. 19

Sinfonia Varsovia
Ian Hobson, conductor

Date: 2019
Label: Toccata Classics
https://toccataclassics.com/product/moritz-moszkowski-orchestral-music-volume-one/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Review

Moritz Moszkowski is remembered primarily for his piano pieces, many of them morceaux, of which a number remained in the repertoires of virtuosi roughly up to the time of the Second World War. This latest release, however, offers something utterly different; a four-movement symphonic poem dating from his early twenties, which is making its first appearance on disc.

Johanna d’Arc, written in 1875-76, was inspired by Schiller’s play Die Jungfrau von Orleans. It was composed at a time when Moszkowski was writing a considerable amount of orchestral music – there is an unpublished Symphony in D minor from 1873 and somewhat later three orchestral suites, amongst a sheaf of other works. Johanna d’Arc is scored for a large symphonic orchestra including piccolo and harp and has a role for solo violin. Each movement contains a superscription; ‘Joan’s pastoral life. Her exalted mission is revealed to her in a vision’ is the first movement whilst ‘Inner conflicts – Recollections’ is the second. ‘The Procession of the conquerors to the coronation at Rheims’ is the third panel and ‘triumph, death and apotheosis’ largely sums up the final section.

The suite lasts an hour with the opening movement the longest at 23 minutes, in this performance. Its Raff-like pastoral introduction has lyric richness and is adeptly orchestrated, with the solo violin offering a somewhat pious presentiment. Some Wagnerian-Brucknerian elements are present too but contextualised in a much lighter ethos, except for echoes of Götterdämmerung from time to time, a work Moszkowski saw at the same time he was writing the suite, so inevitably some of this has seeped into his writing. Themes are ardent though not always profound and if one finds parts of this opening panel prolix one would be in agreement with some of the critics at the première who felt the same way.

The solemn second section reveals Moszkowski to be a melodist securely rooted in Romanticism, those arching lines offering profuse and generous expression. The third panel, meanwhile, is a Processional March with a cantabile-based trio and certainly shows he knows what to do with percussion. The finale is march-based too, though fortunately contrasted because it’s a fife-like military march – roles for flute and piccolo and the return of the violin leads to Joan’s vision and a resumption of the ripe romanticism as well as a transfiguration scene of Wagnerian pretensions.

There are fine notes by Martin Eastick and a well-judged recording. Ian Hobson directs the Sinfonia Varsovia in convincing fashion; they have made valued contributions to the reprtory on disc before and reprise that again here.

There’s much to like in this well-drilled and responsive reading. It offers a different slant on a composer whose posthumous reputation is that of piano pot-pourris. If not everything is convincing, and is said at too great a length, then perhaps subsequent performances would have allowed Moszkowski to rethink the work’s proportions.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moritz Moszkowski (23 August 1854 – 4 March 1925) was a German-Jewish composer, pianist, and teacher of Polish descent on his paternal side. Although less known today, Moszkowski was well respected and popular during the late nineteenth century. Among his teachers are Eduard Franck, Friedrich Kiel, and Theodor Kullak. Moszkowski was quite prolific, composing over two hundred small-scale piano pieces, which brought him much popularity. He also wrote larger scale works including two Piano Concertos, a Violin Concerto, three orchestral suites, and a symphonic poem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moritz_Moszkowski

***

Ian Hobson (born 7 August 1952 in Wolverhampton) is an English pianist, conductor and teacher, and is a professor at Florida State University. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Yale University in the United States. His teachers included Claude Frank, Ralph Kirkpatrick and Menahem Pressler. Hobson won silver medals in the Arthur Rubinstein and Vienna-Beethoven competitions and first prize in the 1981 Leeds International Pianoforte Competition. He has performed in many countries with many orchestras, frequently conducting from the keyboard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Hobson
https://www.ianhobson.net/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

FLAC, tracks

Links in comment

Enjoy!