This afternoon, Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra presented a program at Lincoln Center called "The Remains of Romanticism," providing a cross-section of works by late Romantic German composers. The works spanned the period from the 1860s through the first decade of the 20th century, assembling music by composers whose names may be vaguely familiar from the biographies of the great composers of the time, and concluding with a relatively unknown early work by the major repertory composer on the program, Richard Strauss.
But first, the obscurities. I use that word not as a judgment but as a description, for surely to the early 21st century American concertgoer the music of Robert Fuchs (1847-1927), Siegmund von Hausegger (1872-1948), Hermann Goetz (1840-1876), and Ludwig Thuille (1861-1907) will be terra incognita. All of them won some degree of reknown in their own time, although some (Goetz and Thuille) died too young to leave the kind of major mark they might have left had they the opportunity of a few more decades of active compositional life. They were all accomplished craftsmen, capable on the evidence of this afternoon's concert of writing credible works with beautiful orchestration, interesting figurations and harmonies, and intensely dramatic moments. What none of them could achieve, however, is the kind of original first-rate tune that sticks in your head and haunts you for days and makes you want to listen to their music over and over. And this explains, in my opinion, why they are obscurities. Thuille's Romantic Overture, for example, is a thoroughly Wagnerian essay but without Wagner's inventive melodic gift or his ability to sustain an interesting harmonic tension over a long time period. There were moments that sounded to me like snippets of the Tannhauser Overture and Bacchanale -- but of course I can hear those moments in a more interesting context by listening to the model and eschewing the knock-off. Similarly, the Goetz Violin Concerto, a product of the 1860s, prefigures the great violin concerti that were to follow over the next few decades - Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak.... But it lacks their memorability of tunes, sounding more like elegant, well-orchestrated note-spinning.
Is this damning with faint praise? Well, yes. Each of these pieces was fairly interesting while it was being played, and sometimes even more than that, given the talent for orchestration among late 19th century German romantic composers, and one wouldn't mind hearing any of these pieces again, perhaps more suitably ensconced in the midst of a more varied program so they wouldn't wear out their welcomes. But none of these pieces was crying out to be heard again any time soon.
On the other hand....
Quality will out. Richard Strauss was a great composer. He wrote pieces that remain part of the standard orchestral repertory more than a century later, the early tone poems. He wrote operas that are part of the core repertory up to a century after their introduction, such as Salome, Elektra, Rosenkavalier. His 4 Last Songs have entered the standard repertory, and such major effusions as Heldenleben and Don Quixote get played frequently to great acclaim. So here was a member of the company of musical geniuses, whatever one thinks of his politics, and hearing the work of the 20 year old Strauss in his Symphony in F Minor, OP. 12, of 1884, is quite tantalizing. He was not yet the fully formed master he would become, but there is much to admire in this symphony, especially in the Andante cantabile. I thought the finale owed much at times to Bruckner, and wonder whether the 20 year old Strauss would have heard much of Bruckner's music? Or were there just musical ideas in the air at a time when both composers, the elderly Bruckner and the youthful Strauss, could breath them in? The first two movements are less distinguished, although the scherzo at times has a Mendelssohnian quality of scurrying lighteness.
Botstein and the ASO make a great contribution by bringing this music "out of the closet" and letting us hear it in acceptable (if at times this afternoon a bit rough-and-ready) performances. None of this music is familiar to the orchestra, so allowances can be made. After all, the major orchestras mainly subsist on playing the same familiar core repertory as a significant portion of their concertizing, leaving plenty of time to learn the few novelties they stick into their programs. At an ASO concert, however, one can almost guarantee that all the musicians had to learn every piece fresh for these performances, making their accomplishment most worthy.
The next concert in this series promises to be quite revelatory - an entire evening (January 29) devoted to the mainly forgotten music of Henry Cowell, an American pioneer of mid-20th century music who, to judge by the handful of works in my record collection, was a most inventive composer whose work is always worth hearing. Be there or be square.... quite literally. (And for those interested in gay cultural history, Cowell, although married, played around with the boys and even did prison time for some incautious cruising activity....)