FRANZ SCHMIDT (1874-1939): Symphony No. 3 in A major; Chaconne in D minor – Malmo Symphony Orchestra/ Vassily Sinaisky – Naxos 8.572119, 77:27 *****:
Franz Schmidt has received a moderate amount of attention over the years from the recording companies and conductors like Mehta and Knappertsbusch. Neeme Jarvi and the Chicago Symphony recorded the symphonies for Chandos, and Franz Welser-Most and one of the London orchestras had a go at the Fourth for EMI. Schmidt’s symphonies would make a pretty powerful impression for any orchestra running an audiophile series.
Schmidt loved Bruckner’s music and was Mahler’s first cellist in Vienna. The result is something more purposeful than Bruckner, less neurotic than Mahler, and neither sentimental nor sweet but rather by using the brass and the strings to mix it up more, and to restore a little more respect for the woodwinds. Schmidt’s a little shorter too. It’s really worth a try if you haven’t heard it before. It’s the opposite of edgy, but both Bruckner and Mahler would be astounded to hear his music dismissed as it is so conventionally.
Maybe it’s just the Harbeth/Exposure/Rega Saturn I heard Franz Schmidt on, a system which takes the size and precision of the famed BBC monitor and gives it a touch of air. The increase in ambience slightly softens the highs to what you might call an analog high. The low end, meanwhile, gains substantially by the extra resonance lent by the added sonic elasticity, and winds up with enough punch and power especially on recordings that themselves are pushing the limits of classical music sound. I’ll be talking to Gene Rubin, who suggested this system, to explain its merits in his eyes (his ears, I mean) and talk a little about where we are with equipment these days.
The conductor is Vassily Sinaisky who was just named director of the Bolshoi opera in Moscow. I heard Sinaisky and the Bolshoi in Dresden in June. He is a conductor to be reckoned with, and he has the size and scope of the Symphony firmly in hand as it begins with elegy of breathless inspiration and ends with a stunning Finale.
The Malmo Symphony may not have the firepower of Chicago, but Sinaisky communicates an interest in tone and texture that the Swedish orchestra takes to heart and adds warmth and body. The recordings were made in 2008 and 2009 at the Orchestra’s hall in Malmo where the small seating capacity (1,200 seats) adds an attractive intimacy to the glamorous dynamics and colors of the highly-prized venue.
Schmidt’s 30-minute Chaconne, which was originally written for solo organ, is like something Stokowski would have chosen as a demo piece if he had been Furtwaengler.
— Laurence Vittes
