Search - Joseph Martin Kraus, Werner Ehrhardt, Concerto Köln :: Joseph Martin Kraus: Symphonies

Reissue of a Lauded Release from the Early 1990s

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 10/13/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792) was a German-born and -trained composer who nonetheless is often called 'the Swedish Mozart' because he spent the last years of his life working for King Gustav III of Sweden. He was born the same year as Mozart and died the same year that Mozart did. Kraus's music is not so much like Mozart's as that of Haydn's Sturm und Drang middle period. This two-CD set combines and reissues two earlier releases on the Capriccio label from the early 1990s. It features the original instruments ensemble Concerto Köln under the direction of Werner Ehrhardt. When I first heard these releases back then I was taken with them. Now, almost twenty years later I am less so, at least partly because these works have since been recorded on modern instruments on the Naxos label by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra under Petter Sundkvist in decidedly more enjoyable performances, e.g., Complete Symphonies 4. I will admit my own bias in that I tend to prefer modern instruments to 'original' instruments, and that is particularly true for recordings that are from twenty or thirty years ago when the numbers of really good original instruments groups had not yet proliferated. Although the 1990s Concerto Köln was one of the finest of its era, it still does not measure up to contemporary groups, with occasional intonation and timbral problems. Although the ensembles winds are particularly warm-sounding, I was occasionally bothered by a principal flute that seemed marginally under pitch.



There are eight symphonies in this set, including one in C sharp minor that was the first four-movement version of the later three-movement C minor symphony, also included. It is interesting to compare the two. Not only did Kraus change much of the material and the key signature, he also altered the orchestration so that the two seem more like cousins than siblings. Also included is the marvelous 'Symphonie funèbre' in C minor which was composed for the funeral of King Gustav who had been assassinated at a masked ball, an event that became the source of Verdi's Ballo in Maschera.



The set is offered at budget price.



Scott Morrison



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