Search - Franz Berwald, Niklas Willen, Malmö Opera Orchestra :: Franz Berwald: The Battle of Leipzig

World Premieres in Beguiling Performances

06/25/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Franz Berwald produced his best music and the music that has made his reputation during one decade, the 1840s. However, he composed over the course of six decades. This Sterling CD offers music from four of those decades, some in world-premiere recordings, as the CD label tells us. As expected, the relatively familiar music of the mature Berwald is by far the strongest: the starkly dramatic overture to the opera "Estrella de Soria" and the more light-hearted overture to the opera "The Queen of Golconda." These works can take their place with the overtures of Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Berlioz as among the finest of the early Romantic era. The disc also includes previously unrecorded orchestral excerpts from the two operas, and like the overtures, they display Berwald's wonderfully quirky way with melody and harmony, full of hairpin turns of phrase and shading. They also show his mastery of the orchestra--his unique writing for the brass, especially the trombones, which he often cuts loose from a purely supporting role.The longest piece on the CD is "The Battle of Leipzig," written in the often-disparaged tradition of Beethoven's "Wellington's Victory." Call me shallow, but I like Beethoven's work, and I like "The Battle of Leipzig" too. Written in 1828, it doesn't have the unique virtues discussed above: The melodic invention, orchestration, and harmony are all pretty conventional compared to those of the symphonies, tone poems, and overtures, but "The Battle" is enjoyable nonetheless, the combat itself colorfully depicted. The pieces for violin and orchestra are from 1817 (the concerto) and 1816 (the variations). They work because as a violinist, Berwald understood the instrument intimately and knew how to get both brilliance and sweetness out of it. The concerto for the most part tries for brilliance; the variations for sweetness. They are attractive works that won't stay in the mind long, though the concerto features a structural innovation Berwald was to use later to great effect in his symphonies: After a slow introduction, the piece launches into a rondo first movement that returns at the end, framing as it does a Tempo di Marcia middle movement, which in turn briefly tails off to a slow bridge section. The upshot is a work that balances concision and variety in the manner of those surprising symphonic scherzos-within-slow movements Berwald was to pen in the 1840s.Most of the performances on this CD seem just right. The concerted pieces have spunk and charm, "The Battle of Leipzig" is done with the necessary seriousness of purpose it needs to succeed, and the orchestral music from the operas is played with gusto, with perfect strokes of color supplied by the all-important brass section. Strangely, though, the "Queen of Golconda" overture is kind of foursquare and pedestrian when it should sail wittily by. And while I'm being critical, I should mention that Berwald's writing for the two violins contains so much doubling and canonic play that there is little differentiation between the players, so it would have helped if the two violinists in this recording had been given better stereo placement. Other than that, however, the sound is very good--full and impactive--rounding out an attractive package of music from Sweden's finest composer."