Search - Markus Kohler, Richard Wetz, Werner Andreas Albert :: Richard Wetz: Violin Concerto

Not Very Original, and Not Very Compelling

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 02/06/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Richard Wetz (1875-1935) was essentially a self-taught composer who spent most of his professional life in Erfurt. His works had modest success during his life. At the end of his life he enjoyed the patronage of the Nazis. Despite the efforts of such influential musicians as Peter Raabe, President of the Reichsmusikkammer, who established the Richard-Wetz Gesellschaft in 1943, his work was performed very rarely and has only been revived infrequently since World War II. The cpo label has released his three early symphonies, Brucknerian in tone, and follows up with this release.



There are three works on this CD. The earliest is the 'Traumsommernacht' ('Dream Summer Night'), Op. 14, from 1904. Five minutes long, and set for women's chorus and orchestra to the words of an idyl by Otto Julius Bierbaum, it is highly indebted to the music of Bruckner, not very original but effective for what it is. Unfortunately, given its short length, it is also the best thing on this disc. The chorus, however, is only approximately tuned and this nearly ruins the ethereal grace of the piece.



'Hyperion,' Op. 32, for baritone, chorus and orchestra, from 1912, and set to the last (prose) passage of Hölderlein's novel of the same name, is set in only slightly less Brucknerian style and with some of the tone-poem characteristics of Liszt. It has some very interesting things in it. But even the writer of the booklet (and, I believe, also the producer of the earlier Wetz CDs, Eckhardt van den Hoogen) admits that its reach exceeds its grasp. The performance here by baritone Markus Köhler is provincial. This is sixteen minutes of what-might-have-been.



The big piece offered here is Wetz's Violin Concerto in B Minor, Op. 57, from 1933. It is a thirty minute, one-movement work that moves away from Bruckner to some degree, but as far as I can tell it has no clear style, nor for that matter a lucid form. It falls into four sections, but it is episodic. The orchestration is often clotted with unpolished counterpoint and little memorable melodic content. It's as if it were an opera comprised entirely of dry recitative. Nothing sticks in the mind, and very little makes you want to hear it again. Ulf Wallin, the solo violinist, is technically fairly secure but his tone is sometimes thin and harsh, and his phrasing utilitarian. For my money, this concerto is not worth the effort and it sounds as if Werner Andreas Albert and his Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz may feel that, too.



I'm sad to say all this because cpo has brought us some wonderful discoveries from the byways of late Romantic and twentieth century German and Scandinavian music in recent years. One thinks, for instance, of the recent releases of Reznicek's 'Der Sieger' and 'Schlemihl.' And they've just released, but I haven't yet heard it, Reznicek's opera 'Donna Diana.' But this release is simply not one of their triumphs. I do hope, though, that cpo will continue searching for music worthy of their efforts.



TT=52:11



Scott Morrison"