Search - Mueller, Bamberg Symphony, Gulke :: Concerto for Large Orchestra Op 5 / Durer Symphony

Interesting glimpse of a largely overlooked musical traditio

G.D. | Norway | 02/05/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Gottfried Müller (1914-1993) belongs to that group of composers that in the thirties rejected any trace of individualism and 19th century romanticism and rather looked back to the Baroque for artistic guidance. In fact, this group encompassed many composers and a lot of music of which more or less nothing is ever heard these days. Part of the reason might simply be that several of the composers were not exactly opposing the Third Reich, and indeed Müller himself was in favor with Goebbels (although the booklet notes do not really give us much information about the extent of Müller's actual involvement), and part of it might - more obviously, perhaps - be that the music is, shall we say, somewhat austere.



The two works presented here were written in 1937 (the concerto) and 1963 (the symphony) respectively, but Müller apparently didn't undergo any real stylistic development in the meantime (although the latter work sounds more technically assured). To give a stylistic reference, think Pepping or, if that doesn't really tell you anything, Reger in black and white. These are heavy, dark, densely polyphonic works, harmonically rather conservative (always tonal) and imposingly stern and in fact rather forbidding, something like musical equivalents to dark, gothic cathedrals, peppered with some form of "universal melancholy" (especially the symphony).



Performances are fine (the Bamberg players have over the years given us a quite impressive series of excellent performances of rare works). This is certainly not immediately appealing music, and none of the works are by any standards masterpieces, but they do give us an interesting glimpse of a musical tradition that is not very well represented on disc, and for the adventuresome (or those wanting a more complete picture of musical history) that might be reason enough."