WDR Chamber Gamers file six discs of Spohr’s string chamber music for Pentatone

Carl Heinrich Arnold (1793-1874) – String quartet within the Spohr home, c. 1840 CC BY-NC-SA © Internationale Louis Spohr Gesellschaft e.V., Spohr Museum Kassel

Two years older than Weber, as a violin virtuoso hailed as a “German Paganini”, a pioneer in using the conductor’s baton and an necessary determine within the transition from Classical to Romantic music, Louis Spohr wrote ten symphonies, ten operas, 18 violin concertos and far else moreover. 

But his repute has by no means actually risen following his dying in 1859 when he was seen as a consultant of the previous order fairly than a precursor of the brand new. The Neue Berliner Musikzeitung referred to as Spohr “the final consultant of that noble college whose roots reached deep into classical soil.” 

His opera Faust, which isn’t truly primarily based on Goethe however on Faust performs and poems by Friedrich Maximilian Klinger and Heinrich von Kleist, is a crucial work in German Romantic opera. It premiered in 1816 in Prague with Weber conducting, 5 years earlier than Weber’s Der Freischutz, and Meyerbeer carried out it in Berlin the identical 12 months. In 1851 Spohr turned it from singspiel into grand opera. But for all of the work’s significance, when it was staged in Bielefeld in 1993, it was most likely the work’s first staging since 1931!

Spohr stays greatest know for his Nonet, not a lot as a result of it’s performed regularly as as a result of it grew to become iconic, the precursor of many such works by different composers. Spohr’s chamber music was usually written for his personal efficiency and there’s a vital quantity of it, together with 36 string quartets! 

Now, having explored Brahms’ string quintets and sextets, the WDR Chamber Gamers (all members of the WDR Sinfonie Orchester) have returned to Pentatone for The Romantic Room: Chamber Works by Louis Spohr. This expansive, six-disc set options Spohr’s 4 double string quartets, seven string quintets and string sextet. The music spans Spohr’s profession, his first quintet dates from 1814 while they unfold to 1850. His sextet dates from the revolutionary 12 months of 1848, and in a short be aware in his private catalogue he refers back to the work as “Written in March and April in the course of the superb folks’s revolution for the revival of Germany’s freedom, unity, and greatness.”

Full particulars on the Pentatone label. Joyful exploring.