Symphony No. 2 by Karl Goldmark. Conducted by Michael Halasz with the The Rhenish Philharmonic Orchestra.
I. Allegro - 00:00
II. Andante - 10:50
III. Allegro Quasi Presto - 19:46
IV. Andante Assai - Allegro Alla Breve - 25:31
The Hungarian composer Karl Goldmark was born in Keszthely in 1830, one of the twenty children of a synagogue cantor. In 1834 the family moved to Deutsch-Kreuz and it was there that, in 1841, he was able to receive some elementary musical instruction from a village teacher. The following year he entered the music school at the neighbouring town of Ödenburg, and two years later he moved to Vienna, where he continued his study of the violin under Leopold Jansa, supporting himself as well as he could, until forced by poverty to return to Deutsch-Kreuz.
In 1847 Goldmark entered the Conservatory in Vienna, after first having qualified for entry to the Vienna Technical School. He became a violin pupil of Joseph Böhm and studied music theory, but returned home in 1848, after the closing of the Conservatory in the revolutionary disturbances of that year, in which, through a mistake of identity, he narrowly avoided execution as a rebel. This marked the end of his formal musical training, which was followed by work as a violinist in various theatre orchestras. He taught himself to play the piano, and gave lessons in Vienna, where he returned in 1850 to work at the Josefstadt Theater, continuing to develop his practical knowledge of music and to display this in a series of compositions that attracted little serious attention.
In 1875 Goldmark won considerable success with his opera Die Königin von Saba, a work of lavish orchestral colour, which was first performed at the Vienna Court Opera under Wilhelm Gericke, and thereafter by many German and Italian opera companies. In 1910 the opera received its first English performance in Manchester by the Carl Rosa Company. Its composition had taken the composer some ten years, and in 1886 after four years' work, a second opera was completed, Merlin, to be followed by four subsequent operas, two of them, Das Heimchen am Herd ('The Cricket on the Hearth') and Ein Wintermärchen ('A Winter's Tale'), on English subjects, adapted from Dickens and Shakespeare respectively.
In Vienna Goldmark occupied a position of honour. He enjoyed the friendship of Brahms and of Johann Strauss, and his abilities received official recognition at home and abroad. At first an obvious successor to the traditions of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Spohr, he later succumbed to the pervasive influence of Wagner, shown in his Ländliche Hochzeit Symphony, a work that remains marginally in current orchestral repertoire, and in the Overture Penthesilea. His practical experience as a musician and his own studies made him a proficient composer, with a mastery of musical effects, well demonstrated in Die Königin von Saba, and his skill and inventiveness suggest that his music deserves more attention than it has generally received since his death in 1915.
The second of Goldmark's two symphonies was completed in 1887 and published two years later. It is in many ways a work of classical craftsmanship, its first movement showing the influence of Mendelssohn and his precursors, yet without anachronism, since the deft handling of orchestral colour hints in passing at the world of Mahler, a composer who was to receive encouragement from Goldmark in later years, after earlier rejection.
The second movement of the symphony couples a dramatic element with the lyricism that was always a strong feature of Goldmark's work. It leads to a scherzo and trio, the first recalling a slightly sinister fairy world, in contrast to the hymn-like trumpet melody that opens the latter.
The finale opens with a slow introduction, soon replaced by a lively Allegro, its tendency to rapid perpetual motion occasionally interrupted by episodes of a more lyrical nature, clear in texture and, in spite of apparent simplicity, always avoiding the merely commonplace.
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Karl Weigl - Symphony No. 6 in A Minor (1947)by GoldieG89594 views
This is awesome. Thank you GoldieG89 for putting this up. I can feel my musical horizons expanding....need to purchase this symphony....never heard of this composer....just getting out of basic standard repertoire.....
drmuller77 3 months ago
Splendiferous!
malcolmcolemann 6 months ago