Brahms, sure. Schumann. Schubert. Mendelssohn. Liszt. If there is talk of Romantic symphonies in the German-speaking world, these are the first ones that come to mind. And all too often the concert repertoire – fortunately things have been different with sound recordings for a long time – is exhausted in this narrow circle. Adolph Henselt? Louis Thuille? Albert Dietrich? Joseph Joachim? Here we come to the shady corners of the repertoire. The late 19th and early 20th century scene was teeming with creative minds. But as it is, you travel through the middle of the mountains, you see many high and low peaks, if it is behind you, only the high ones remain when you look back.
The fact that the others are also worthy of recognition was impressively demonstrated on Thursday evening in the “Neue Welt” concert and ballroom in Zwickau at the third symphony concert of the Clara Schumann Philharmonic Plauen-Zwickau under General Music Director Leo Siberski. “Brahms & Co.” was the motto of the evening repeated on Friday in Plauen. It ended with a brilliant performance of the 4th symphony by the eponymous Hamburg composer, which left nothing to be desired in terms of tension, transparency and dynamic contrasts. Five young musicians from the Zwickau Robert Schumann Conservatory and the Plauen Vogtland Conservatory, who were integrated into the concert as part of the Philkon project, contributed to this.
In this they are likely to have something ahead of most of their professional colleagues in almost all other symphony orchestras in the world. Namely, that they had the sheet music of Albert Dietrich’s (1829 – 1908) violin concerto played before the break on the podium – a very rarely played work by a close confidante of Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann. As a soloist, the West Saxons had the predestined violinist at the start – Elisabeth Kufferath, who in 2008 acted as the soloist on the only currently available CD recording of the work, which was released by the Osnabrück rarities label CPO. And with her fabulous, lively playing, the Hamburg native made it clear to the audience the value of this three-quarter-hour work, which premiered in 1875 and is rich in virtuoso pitfalls, ingenious turns and instrumental ideas, and which, among other things, has echoes of Max Bruch and the early Richard Wagner. And at the same time – also in view of the thunderous applause – the question arises as to why it is not played more often. The same applies to the overture “In Memoriam Heinrich von Kleist” by Brahms’ confidante Joseph Joachim (1831 – 1907), which opened the evening.
Conclusion: An evening that showed that it is worth taking a closer look at the music of the Romantic period. The audience is sometimes more curious than you might think.
The concert will be repeated on Friday evening at 7.30 p.m. in the Vogtlandtheater Plauen.