Marx - Orchestral Songs & Choral Works | Chandos CHAN10505

Marx - Orchestral Songs & Choral Works

£14.49

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Label: Chandos

Cat No: CHAN10505

Format: CD

Number of Discs: 1

Genre: Vocal/Choral

Release Date: 5th January 2009

Contents

About

The Austrian composer Joseph Marx was for much of his long career a musical authority of world renown. Within his large output, his songs were amongst his greatest musical achievements, unifying romanticism, impressionism and expressionism with revolutionary results. Many thought him the rightful successor to Hugo Wolf and yet today the name and music of Joseph Marx have fallen into obscurity.

The ‘Marx style’ is unmistakable. It is characterised by a highly personal compositional technique displaying a polyphonic harmony of full sonority, allied to masterly contrapuntal skills and frequent key changes which occur apparently at random but are in fact distributed with utter logic. The music strikes the listener as timeless, refreshingly modern and, above all, surprising, able to exploit tonal means of expression to the full and raise the spirits of every true lover of melody.

Jiří Bělohlávek here conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in the long overdue premiere of four choral works, along with the first complete recording of Marx’s orchestral songs for soprano, performed by Christine Brewer.

Three works are of particular note. Herbstchor an Pan, a single-movement cantata written in 1911, lasts very nearly twenty minutes and was Marx’s first, and for many years only, orchestral composition. It has inexplicably fallen into oblivion in the past five decades. However, it has turned out to be one of the masterpieces of its entire era. Ein Neujahrshymnus (A Hymn for the New Year) is richly orchestrated and demonstrates the profound romantic vein of Joseph Marx; it is here performed for the first time in its orchestral version. This disc represents not only the first recording of Berghymne but also its world premiere performance.

Songs: Barkarole / Der bescheidene Schäfer / Hat dich die Liebe berührt / Maienblüten / Marienlied / Piemontesisches Volkslied / Selige Nacht / Sommerlied / Ständchen / Und gestern hat er mir Rosen gebracht / Waldseligkeit / Zigeuner

Choral Works:
Herbstchor an Pan / Ein Neujahrshymnus / Berghymne / Morgengesang

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