# Weber overtures plus



## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

The recording: Carl Maria Von Weber, Oberon and Euryanthe Overtures
Nuova Era/Theorema Studio Recordings TH121214
(P) 9-1994
Carl Schuricht/Südwestfunk Sinfonie-Orchester, Baden-Baden

The CD also includes a recording of Christian Ferras playing Brahms' Violin Concerto, Schuricht conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.

The (P) date in this case is is highly unlikely. It is supposed to indicate the recording date, and this 'studio recording' is early 1950s mono at best. The Cedar restoration trademark is present.

The music is melodic, cheerful and unrestrained. Weber wasn't worried about sounding trite, because he was an early representative of a new concept in western music - that came to be known as The Romantic Era. His music was built upon the foundation provided by the 'proto-Romantics', who themselves seem to have been more influenced by Mozart than by Beethoven. Weber could write Romantic melodies without worrying about sounding like 'everybody else', because the field was wide open.

In case you haven't guessed, I am hoping to foment a discussion about the music of the early Romantic period. Could it have taken a different path? Were there composers who composed new music that didn't 'take'? (Think of Reger, a century later).


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Hi H72. If your question in the last paragraph is referring to composers of that era who were undervalued thus failing to shape the musical world around them then Schubert is to me the obvious example as he was pushing the envelope in most genres but battling against the tide of prevailing bourgeois taste and making the mistake of dying before he could benefit from the recognition of his efforts. Berlioz' early works didn't make much headway either - great, far-reaching works but the wrong time - a bit like a 19th century Velvet Underground. People at that time wanted entertainment rather than profundity so Berlioz had already backed the wrong horse but to his credit he never compromised. Weber was one composer who was astute enough to know which way the wind blew and could write accordingly but without any apparent loss to his integrity. I think Mendelssohn was his natural successor in this regard, the exception being that he hadn't developed the necessary faculty for opera. Not that it really mattered - Mendelssohn could console himself that his successes lay elsewhere. Apart from them, it took a certain triumvirate of piano virtuosi to stamp their own personalities and works on the times and lure enough of the public away from opera-comique and reintroduce them to the salon and the concert hall. The influence of those whose works fell by the wayside through no fault of their own was only felt when Romanticism as we know it was in full swing.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

You definitely 'catch my drift', EG.

I have entertained the notion that composers such as Schubert and Weber, who both made attempts to compose within the discipline of 'classical style' and found it uncomfortable, maybe even impossible for them, were not typical examples of the proto-Romantic composer. Schubert composed like a 'loose-jointed', more melody-loaded Beethoven. Weber's orchestral and concertante music sounds like it evolved from Mozart's.

When I think of proto-Romantic composers I come up with Moscheles, who couldn't shed the old disciplines (he was not at all happy with Liszt and Chopin), and Hummel, who was successful in his work and admired by the new Romantics, but whose musical 'language' is a dialect that was not carried on.

As the music-educated among you have no doubt noticed, my views are essentially uneducated; I'm just a longtime listener who has read some. I'm probably in error everywhere, and promise not to be insulted when corrected.

I thought of adding the cover view of the CD I mentioned in the thread starter post, but haven't figured out how to edit that post. So I'll stick it here. Note that the orchestra in the Brahms is the Vienna Philharmonic, not the Berlin Philharmonic.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Hilltroll72 said:


> You definitely 'catch my drift', EG.
> 
> As the music-educated among you have no doubt noticed, my views are essentially uneducated; I'm just a longtime listener who has read some. I'm probably in error everywhere, and promise not to be insulted when corrected.
> 
> ...


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