Moritz Moszkowski - Orchestral Music, Vol. 2 (Ian Hobson)

Information

Composer: Moritz Moszkowski

• (01) Suite d'Orchestre No. 2, Op. 47
• (07) Suite d'Orchestre No. 3, Op. 79

Sinfonia Varsovia

Ian Hobson, conductor

Date: 2020

Label: Toccata

https://toccataclassics.com/product/moritz-moszkowski-orchestral-music-volume-two/

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

Review

Moszkowski is best known for his myriad short piano pieces. Great pianists of the past from Rachmaninov to Horowitz had at least one of them in their repertoire. But what of his orchestral works? Apart from his Spanish Dances, Op 12 (orchestrated by his friend Philipp Scharwenka), From Foreign Lands, the bafflingly under-played Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto in E major, little has been recorded.

Martin Anderson’s ever-enterprising Toccata Classics last year gave us the first-ever recording of Moszkowski’s extraordinary four-movement tone poem Johanna d’Arc, Op 19 (1875-76) depicting the life, death and transfiguration of the heroine of Schiller’s play Die Jungfrau von Orleans. Much of the first movement (23 minutes in length) sounds like a prescient Hollywood film score. Its last movement was an unlikely but almost certain influence on Richard Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung.

Those who know the Moszkowski concertos will recognise the composer’s autograph in the musical textures of this work and the two Orchestral Suites that feature on Vol 2. Ian Hobson, who won the 1981 Leeds International Piano Competition, once again acts as both producer and conductor, leading the Sinfonia Varsovia in performances of winning verve and character.

For this listener, the Deuxième Suite, Op 47 (1890, 41 minutes in duration), has the feeling of six separate works for orchestra simply bundled together for publication, emphasised by the opening Preludio and Fuga movements having a brief part for organ that never returns (as expected) for the final triumphant Marcia. Notwithstanding, all six are blessed with Moszkowski’s unstoppable flow of melody: the Larghetto fourth movement is simply gorgeous while the second subject of the Marcia, as Martin Eastick observes in his superb booklet essay, takes on an Elgarian twist reminiscent of Cockaigne ‘still 10 years away’.

The Troisième Suite (from 1908), here receiving its first digital recording, will be familiar to collectors who got to know it in the 1970s through a subscription-issue LP of the Louisville Orchestra, where it appeared alongside works by Reger, Bizet and Nápravník. I cannot understand why this tuneful, expertly crafted, undemanding score is hardly known. Is it because it falls between two stools, neither in the Austro-German symphonic mould nor strictly ‘light classical’ – though there are passages in the first and last of its four movements that could easily be mistaken for Eric Coates and occasionally Arthur Sullivan? Whatever, it dances along so merrily that, while some might affect a sniffy resistance, it defies you not to be its friend.

Hopefully this series will continue and bring us something of the ballet Laurin, opera Boabdil and further examples of Moszkowski’s woefully neglected orchestral music.

-- Jeremy Nicholas, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Oct/Moszkowski-orchestral-v2-TOCC0557.htm

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Nov/moszkowski-orchvol2-TOCC0557.htm

https://www.amazon.com/Moszkowski-Orchestral-Music-Vol-2/dp/B08FF783L2

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

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!