Schmidt: The Book with Seven Seals; Symphony No. 4

SOMM Recordings honours Franz Schmidt, one of the great symphonic
composers of the 20th century, on the 150th anniversary of his birth with this
double-disc set featuring two of his masterworks. Revered in his day in his native
Austria as the nation’s leading composer and an elite teacher, cellist and pianist,
his name will not be known to many. This is due, at least in part, to a perceived
association with the Third Reich (against which there is ample evidence). This first
release on CD of two premiere recordings, meticulously produced and restored
by Lani Spahr, showcases Schmidt’s unique harmonic language, exceptional
contrapuntal skill and mastery of form, qualities which prompted Hans Pfitzner
to call Schmidt’s Symphony No.4 “nearer perfection than Bruckner, more honest
than Richard Strauss and more original than Reger”.
Born in Pressburg (Bratislava) in 1874, Schmidt’s teachers (piano) included his
mother (herself a student of Liszt), Rudolf Mader, Ludwig Burger and Theodor
Leschetizky; (cello) Karl Udel and Ferdinand Hellmesberger; and (theory) Felicián
Moczik and Robert Fuchs. He was, for a time, principal cellist in the Vienna
Philharmonic under Mahler. While his symphonic output is clearly in the structural
mould of Schubert, Brahms and Bruckner, his harmonic language, while showing
influences of Strauss, Mahler and early Schoenberg, is clearly his own.
A near fatal heart attack in the years following the success of his Fourth Symphony
prompted the composer to put his efforts into a major religious work. His setting
of eight chapters of the last book of the New Testament in Martin Luther’s German
became The Book with Seven Seals (From the Revelation of St John the Divine),
not through-composed but constructed of clearly defined sections in the great
19th-century oratorio tradition.
The success of this summum opus and his stature in Austria drew the attention of
the Nazis, who commissioned Schmidt to write a cantata on partisan texts (which he
abandoned, only for it to be completed by a student and nevertheless performed
under Schmidt’s name). With the fading of this unfortunate association a growing
number of prominent conductors (the Järvis, Welser-Möst, Luisi, Bychkov) have
begun to revive performances of his music in our time.
Lani Spahr’s previous SOMM releases include the lauded four-volume sets Vaughan
Williams Live (ARIADNE 5016, 5018-20) and Elgar Remastered (SOMMCD 261-4), as
well as Elgar from America, Volume 3 (Ariadne 5015-2), which garnered a Gramophone
Editor’s Choice for “superb audio restorations [bringing] performances fully to life”.