# Franz Schmidt (1874–1939)



## Leggiero

Amazed that there isn't a guestbook for this composer yet. His symphonies are amazing, placing him third, IMHO, in the list of composers of four such works, behind Brahms and Schumann.


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## Pugg

The only piece I really know is Quintet for clarinet, strings & piano in A major, never got any further.


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## Antiquarian

His symphony No.2 is amazing. I have the CSO performance with Järvi conducting (Chandos 8779). You get the feeling that Schmidt loved working with large forces.


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## Leggiero

The Järvi cycle is probably the one to have, although some people have doubts about his no.4 (there seems to be this myth going round that only Austrian musicians know how to "do" Schmidt "properly"). That's easily his best-known symphony, and the one I fell in love with first, but I've come to realise that, as with Brahms, each of the symphonies is a strong work in its own right.



> You get the feeling that Schmidt loved working with large forces.


Indeed, although that isn't to say that there isn't delicacy aplenty. It's very rare that the size of the orchestra is "in your face", as it were. It isn't accidental that many teachers of orchestration use Schmidt as a benchmark.


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## Nereffid

The first Schmidt work I heard was the lovely Intermezzo from _Notre Dame_ (1904). I'm also very fond of his 3rd symphony (1928), which was one of the contestants in the Columbia Record Company's competition to mark Schubert's centenary (Atterberg's 6th symphony won).


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## hpowders

Schmidt Symphony No. 4.
Zubin Mehta directing the Vienna Philharmonic.

One of the best things Mehta has ever done.


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## Pugg

Found this one : F. Schmidt: Beethoven Variations & Piano Concerto

Schmidt, F:
Concertante Variations on a Theme of Beethoven for Piano and Orchestra
Piano Concerto in E flat major for left hand
Markus Becker (piano)
NDR Radiophilharmonie, Eiji Oue

Very good .


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## Leggiero

> (Atterberg's 6th symphony won)


Yes, the judges also favoured the Atterburg over Part 1 of Brian's _Gothic_ that day. Shurely shome mishtake! Don't get me wrong, I find the Atterburg to be a fine work in its own right, but to claim that it's even in the same league as the Schmidt and Brian, let alone better than them, is absurd.


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## maestro267

His oratorio Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln is a great work.


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## manyene

The elegiac slow movement of his 4th Symphony, which I played after my son's funeral


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## Leggiero

As trite as the words sound, @manyene, I'm so sorry for your loss. I hope you found some consolation in that particular music. I find that it can move me to tears just contemplating loss in general, not the loss of anyone in particular.


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## Lenny

I can totally understand the choice of manyene... 

For me, Franz Schmidt was a "hidden gem" back then when I found his music. In my books, it has a same sense of glory and quality as Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, a "spark", as they say.


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## Templeton

Great to read that others appreciate Schmidt, as he is one of my top three favourite composers and certainly the most consistent, in terms of the very high quality of all of his compositions. I have heard most of his recorded output and have yet to discover anything that I did not rate highly, even his opera, Notre Dame, with operas not being my forte.

The Järvi symphony cycle has been mentioned as the one to have but, to my ears, I prefer the Vassily Sinaisky and Malmo Symphony Orchestra and above all, the Fabio Luisi and MDR cycles/recordings. The Mehta/VPO for the Fourth Symphony is amazing but Luisi and his Leipzig orchestra run them very close.

Semyon Bychkov performed the Second Symphony at the London Proms, in 2015, with the Vienna Philharmonic, the highlight of the season for many people, myself included, simply wonderful. If only he would record a full cycle, with the VPO.

Just to add my condolences to Manyenne for his tragic loss. It is said that there is no greater loss than for a parent to lose a child and I can well believe it. I cannot begin, as a parent myself, to imagine how it must be. Given that Schmidt wrote the Fourth as a 'A requiem for my daughter', it was a particularly poignant choice and, one hopes, offered some comfort in the most tragic of circumstances.


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## manyene

Many thanks to all those who have passed on their condolences. The other work I listened to at the time, Suk's Asrael Symphony has similar associations - another very fine work


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## manyene

His Hussar Variations sparked off this poem:

A Hussar’s Life
(A fancy)
As dawn broke
Out of the mist:
Horses and men
Clatter of bridles
Deep hoofprints
In the Hungarian plain.

Then a young boy, I watched them go past
A regiment of mounted Hussars
Dressed in yellow and red, fully-moustached,
Brown-bonnetted, feathers nodding aloft.
Their task over at last, now homeward bound
A ceasefire secured for a while.

Next year, the war to the South was resumed
And some strangers came to our village.
They brought barrels of wine and a musical band,
Invited all the men of our village to attend.
They praised the life of the Hussar
Offered them wine, and struck up the band.

Selling the glamour of a military life
The verbunkos was danced, slow music then fast,
Wine flagons in hands, the men of the village all took part.
At the end of the evening, two men stepped forward,
Signed up to join, then made their farewells,
Left the life of the peasant for the glory of battle.

The very next year, they returned from a campaign
To restore the peace once more on our borders
And shared out the spoils they had gained.
A hussar's life is truly a glorious one!


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## Art Rock

Aside from the already mentioned works, I also enjoy his organ music. A great composer.


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## Templeton

manyene said:


> The other work I listened to at the time, Suk's Asrael Symphony has similar associations - another very fine work


Well, on that basis, I have ordered a copy, having never previously heard of him or his work. It's the recording by Libor Pesek and my/our local orchestra, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. It has good reviews on Amazon and, as importantly, is very inexpensive. I am looking forward to hearing it, thanks.


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## Azol

This is my Schmidt collection and I am quite happy with it:


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## manyene

Templeton said:


> Well, on that basis, I have ordered a copy, having never previously heard of him or his work. It's the recording by Libor Pesek and my/our local orchestra, The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. It has good reviews on Amazon and, as importantly, is very inexpensive. I am looking forward to hearing it, thanks.


My recording as well, and to be recommended, though I am biased!


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## mbhaub

My first post on this site. How did I not know of it before? Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find this thread about Franz Schmidt - my favorite composer of all. There was a time when I really thought that his works would become as well-known and played as his one time conductor, Gustav Mahler. But it didn't happen, sorry to say. But in recent years there have been many fine recordings of his music, and except for some works he wrote when he was quite young, everything has been recorded many times over, except for the second opera Fredegundis. Schmidt is one of the few composers I have traveled all over to hear performed live. That 2015 Proms concert with the second symphony was thrilling! But I for one don't care if Bychkov records it - we have enough fine recordings of the symphonies. What we do need is a complete, legal, recording of Fredegundis!


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## Pugg

mbhaub said:


> My first post on this site. How did I not know of it before? Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find this thread about Franz Schmidt - my favorite composer of all. There was a time when I really thought that his works would become as well-known and played as his one time conductor, Gustav Mahler. But it didn't happen, sorry to say. But in recent years there have been many fine recordings of his music, and except for some works he wrote when he was quite young, everything has been recorded many times over, except for the second opera Fredegundis. Schmidt is one of the few composers I have traveled all over to hear performed live. That 2015 Proms concert with the second symphony was thrilling! But I for one don't care if Bychkov records it - we have enough fine recordings of the symphonies. What we do need is a complete, legal, recording of Fredegundis!


Nice first post, welcome to Talk Classical mbhaub.


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## Leggiero

mbhaub said:


> My first post on this site. How did I not know of it before? Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find this thread about Franz Schmidt - my favorite composer of all. There was a time when I really thought that his works would become as well-known and played as his one time conductor, Gustav Mahler. But it didn't happen, sorry to say.


As a fellow recent joiner, I second @Pugg's welcome! Apparently, Schmidt is well-known and -loved in his native Austria, but for some reason his music doesn't seem to "travel" well beyond Austria's borders - see, also, any number of the more conservative 20th Century British composers.


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## Leggiero

Templeton said:


> The Järvi symphony cycle has been mentioned as the one to have but, to my ears, I prefer the Vassily Sinaisky and Malmo Symphony Orchestra and above all, the Fabio Luisi and MDR cycles/recordings. The Mehta/VPO for the Fourth Symphony is amazing but Luisi and his Leipzig orchestra run them very close.


The Sinaisky set appears to have got a very mixed press, but if it ticks the right boxes for you, then _de gustibus..._, I say! People also seem to rate Yakov Kreizberg's no.4 with the Netherlands Phil, but tragically he didn't live to record the other three symphonies.


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## manyene

mbhaub said:


> My first post on this site. How did I not know of it before? Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find this thread about Franz Schmidt - my favorite composer of all. There was a time when I really thought that his works would become as well-known and played as his one time conductor, Gustav Mahler. But it didn't happen, sorry to say. But in recent years there have been many fine recordings of his music, and except for some works he wrote when he was quite young, everything has been recorded many times over, except for the second opera Fredegundis. Schmidt is one of the few composers I have traveled all over to hear performed live. That 2015 Proms concert with the second symphony was thrilling! But I for one don't care if Bychkov records it - we have enough fine recordings of the symphonies. What we do need is a complete, legal, recording of Fredegundis!


Hopefully, Naxos will move on to record others of his works. Fir many years, only the 4th Symphony was regularly available but things are changing for the better. I'm still not sure whether that symphony, or the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances marks the end of that period of high romanticism that began to peter out after the First World War.


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## Leggiero

manyene said:


> I'm still not sure whether that symphony, or the Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances marks the end of that period of high romanticism that began to peter out after the First World War.


I've certainly come to think of it as the true swansong of the Viennese symphonic tradition, far more so than any Mahler symphony. While later Austrians have gone some way towards reversing the slash-and-burn ethos of the postwar _avant garde_, they seem to have been very reluctant to evoke those particular sounds.


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## Krzysz

Leggiero is right about Schmidt being the last of something - perhaps of the tradition of the romantic symphony and certainly of the Beethoven-Schubert-Brahms-Schumann-Reger lineage. Schmidt's second symphony in particular always seems to me to be totally within that tradition (and perhaps one of its very greatest examples), whereas Mahler seems more tied to expressionism. It's probably the huge rise in popularity of Mahler that obscures this last glorious flowering, and even before that the second Viennese School (which overlapped with Schmidt - he was a friend of Schoenberg) and Stravinsky had started composing stuff that meant music could never be the same again. Schmidt was a hangover from an era that increasingly seemed irrelevant and unfortunately he was also seen as tainted by Nazism.

There has been some attempt to raise his importance to the concert-going public, but the second symphony, which from any view should be popular, is very difficult indeed to play, with huge challenges for the string and horn sections.

Other posters have rightly highlighted Schmidt's fourth symphony as a huge and significant work. I feel it almost moves beyond the romantic symphony tradition with its burden of emotion struggling for expression; it has a rather odd structure, with its centre of gravity resting firmly in the second movement, where the cello's elegy develops into a nightmarish middle section, and the hollowly-cheerful third movement's scherzo, which similarly implodes towards the end before returning to material from the first movement, leaving a brief fourth movement to act as a kind of epilogue. For me this means that the whole thing is aesthetically less satisfying than the second symphony. I don't wish to detract from the wonder of specific aspects of it - the cello's theme in the second movement, for example, is some tune!


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## MusicSybarite

I can say about Schmidt that I enjoy his music partially since there are some works that don't get me. I love his symphonies 1 (the 2nd movement is quite charming and gorgeous), 2 and 4, the Hussar Variations, the Piano concerto, and the Piano quintet. The Symphony No. 3 doesn't appeal to me that much. I feel it's a sincere work, of great purity, but I also feel it lacks something to be more engaging to my ears. Possibly because of its harmony (?). The 2 string quartets are in the same vein of the 3rd symphony. I find them kind of lethargic, without much spark. I don't know the Clarinet quintets yet. Das Buch mit sieben Siegeln is consistently good, too.


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## cougarjuno

Agree with Art Rock, Schmidt also wrote some brilliant organ music


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## Triplets

Semyon Bychkov and the Vienna PO just released a new recording of the Second that was favorably reviewed. I listened to it on Spotify a few days ago. I used to have the Mehta 4th on lp.
The Composer just doesn’t reasonate with me. I find the conservative streak just uninteresting, and his harmonies sound overripe and unattractive. It’s a personal reaction and I am glad that his music is at least getting some exposure


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## Triplets

Semyon Bychkov and the Vienna PO just released a new recording of the Second that was favorably reviewed. I listened to it on Spotify a few days ago. I used to have the Mehta 4th on lp.
The Composer just doesn’t reasonate with me. I find the conservative streak just uninteresting, and his harmonies sound overripe and unattractive. It’s a personal reaction and I am glad that his music is at least getting some exposure


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## Roger Knox

Triplets said:


> Semyon Bychkov and the Vienna PO just released a new recording of the Second that was favorably reviewed. I listened to it on Spotify a few days ago. I used to have the Mehta 4th on lp.
> The Composer just doesn't reasonate with me. I find the conservative streak just uninteresting, and his harmonies sound overripe and unattractive. It's a personal reaction and I am glad that his music is at least getting some exposure


Thanks for your comments, to each his/her own! My reaction listening to this Bychkov/Vienna PO recording was quite different. The work is conservative for its time (1913) but its combination of orchestrational/contrapuntal complexity with transparency to the listener is remarkable. The very difficult score is played exceedingly well, wonderfully recorded by Sony, and it left me with a bouyant feeling. It was BBC Magazine Recording of the Month in July 2017 and I prefer it to the Sinaisky and Jarvi, which to be sure have the advantage of being in complete sets of Schmidt's symphonies.


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## vesteel

What is the best recording of Das Buch? I'm thinking of getting the Harnoncourt one. Is that one good?


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## MusicSybarite

vesteel said:


> What is the best recording of Das Buch? I'm thinking of getting the Harnoncourt one. Is that one good?


I noticed that the audio quality leaves much to be desired. The recording by Welser-Möst is better IMO.


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## LeftHandPianist

Hello fellow-Schmidtians! 

Being a pianist with focal dystonia in my right hand, it was quite a revelation to discover three (!) full-length quintets composed by Franz Schmidt for Paul Wittgenstein. Musically so well-crafted and technically very challenging too. I performed the G major twice last week in my home country (the Netherlands), and am planning to perform the other two in the coming season.

These pieces are truly among the best discoveries that I've done within the last years. The other pieces that Schmidt wrote for Wittgenstein don't resonate as much with me: the Piano Concerto, the Beethoven variations and the odd Toccata.


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## Joachim Raff

_"At its best this is music of great power and harmonious adventurousness, beautifully crafted and patiently built up. At other times, admittedly, it can seem to lose its way…The achievement of Järvi and his orchestra, though, is in making it all seem necessary and inevitable: these are compelling, supremely persuasive performances that constantly underline the music's great qualities"_


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