To begin with, Acousence recorded this music during a live concert on March 3, 2004 at the City of Mainz (Germany) State Theatre. The music was originally recorded on a 24Bit – 192kHz master, mixed and down sampled to 16Bit – 44.1kHz to produce in the end a regular stereo CD. (I should note again that this CD contains only 46:25 minutes of music and sells in Europe for € 15 (Euros) plus shipping and handling (another € 15) for a total of approximately $45 in the US. Go figure that!)
In all these years experiencing both live and reproduced classical music I don’t recall to have ever heard neither the name Hans Rott (1858-1884) nor any of his music but now I know that’s no accident. When Rott died at the very early age of 25 his music disappeared and it’s only recently that his name has surfaced again. Who was Hans Rott? Easy, a music student, and Gustav Mahler’s classmate at the Vienna Music Conservatory; he was briefly his room-mate as well. Both had Anton Bruckner as professor and mentor which was not a very good thing at that time given Johannes Brahms’ and his cronies the conductor Hans Richter and the reigning music critic Eduard Hanslick loathing Bruckner and Wagner’s music. So to make it short, both Rott and Mahler were in trouble from the beginning; Mahler made it somehow but Rott did not, dying from a “pronounced mental disturbance” and tuberculosis. His music died with him although Mahler “borrowed” Rott’s musical ideas sometimes here and there, and many who knew Mahler claimed that Rott’s death was one of his own most painful moments. Please read Steven Ritter’s great informative review of March 12, 2008 for more information on Rott’s life and tribulations.
Rott’s Symphony for Strings (Tracks 1-3) starts in the very dark key of A-flat Major to “progress” methodically to end in another key, which at that time in the still Romantic or Post-Romantic Vienna musical world was not a welcomed style of music composition. Music that progressed through harmonic changes and unexpected structural developments denied Brahms’ rigid structures and was problematic for dogmatic theorists and critics to accept and people to understand. To ask people to accept music that “outstanding” and “learned” theorists and critics would not was a complete anachronism and one that Mozart some 100 years earlier had experienced as well. Bruckner, Rott and Mahler in Vienna, Mascagni in Italy and Nielsen in Denmark for example were covered by the deprecatory epithet of the time: “Wagnerian” and/or “progressive tonality”, and treated more or less as musical freaks.
The String Symphony as played here is very confusing, at times is well organized musically with clear harmonic and melodic lines but it just falls apart far too many times in my opinion. As played at times it sounds no better than a Suzuki ensemble, for example in Track 1 at 2:25 to 2:40 and again at 3:14. Something is fundamentally wrong in this recording of Rott’s String Symphony although I don’t know exactly what and since I don’t have the pertinent score I cannot tell. I think Rott’s symphony is much better than what we hear played by this obviously under-rehearsed band; the performance merits no more than two stars in my opinion.
On the other hand the String Quartet is expertly and convincingly played. It’s beautiful and at the same time sad music obviously reflecting Rott’s life struggle and anguish foreshadowing his early departure from this world. Interesting enough this String Quartet which begins with a slow dissonant introduction which brings memories of Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet (String Quartet No. 19 in C major, KV 465); the same effect will be found later in Shostakovich’s well known String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110 as well. Rott was not afraid to bring old musical forms from the 17th and 18th Century to the fore as in the 4th movement with a classical minuet form which historically speaking had not been used for almost 100 years to produce in a very innovative way a new (in theoretical terms) musical line; incidentally, Mozart also included a minuet in his Dissonance Quarter (the 3rd movement). Rott’s String Quartet alone merits the production of this CD and in my opinion it’s a five star performance.
Final words: one great performance out of two and good sound.
– John Nemaric
