Review: Beck Is Back On CPO!

[00:00:00]Hello, friends. This is Dave Hurwitz, executive editor at ClassicsToday.com.

[00:00:05]Well, it seems that CPO is re-boxing or boxing or de-boxing or reissuing boxes.

[00:00:12]No, they're they're re-boxing some of their sets of interesting orchestral music, and we're going to cover all of them as they come out because this is some really good stuff. And here's the first of them, the symphonies by Franz Ignaz Beck. Now, these these were all issued singly and as a set, and uh we talked about them at the time or I did back on ClassicsToday.com. You can go and have a look at reviews there if you're curious. Uh this features La Stagione Frankfurt under Michael Schneider, a period instrument group that plays them very well. Now, Franz Ignaz Beck was a really a major composer of the early classical period. He lived from 1734 to 1809. He's exact contemporary of Haydn. He was only 2 years younger, and he died in the same year that Haydn did. But, uh most of his music is lost. He was a composer of the Mannheim School. He was trained under Stamitz, and he wound up eventually in Bordeaux, where he ran the opera house and the theaters and composed supposedly huge amounts of theatrical and sacred music, but most of that is lost. But, we do have his earlier symphonies. The the latest of them date from about or published in 1766.

[00:01:29]So, we're talking about the onset of say Haydn's Sturm und Drang period. It was around then. You know, he was just getting settled in Esterházy and was starting to churn out the symphonies, and his style was evolving rapidly. And Beck was really comparable to Haydn, Haydn's middle period or early middle period. Uh and all we have of him are a bunch of symphonies, Opus 1 and Opus 3 and 4. I'm not sure about Opus 2. Is that's symphonies, too? I probably.

[00:01:59]Anyway, there are 12 symphonies here.

[00:02:01]Uh the each Opus has six works. And they are really really terrific pieces. They use all kinds of interesting motivic development as Haydn was working on as well. Uh the D minor symphony particularly in Opus three or G minor, pardon me, in Opus three is in some element of cyclical form. It has some thematic sharing between movements. He conceives his symphonies as individual entities. Most of them are scored for strings with horns or horns and oboes. A couple are just strings. Um but they are really really lovely works. I have here, let me just show you a couple of them here. Uh we can talk about them anyway. Uh the booklet, by the way, contains all the original notes from the the original single CD releases, which is fabulous.

[00:02:54]So, you get like a lot of information.

[00:02:57]Um and it's so rare to see like that quality nice sturdy box here and attractive artwork. And it's Oh, it's just just a class act, these folks. They really are at CPO. So, uh most of the symphonies are in four movements. Some are in three.

[00:03:13]Uh and there are, you know, no wind parts in the slow movements. They're for strings only as was typical of Haydn's style at the time as well. You also get some shorter pieces. You get the overture to the death of Orpheus.

[00:03:25]Um and to L'Isola disabitata, the deserted island, which was Haydn's L'Isola disabitata, the same thing, of Metastasio's story. Um and let's see, there's a melodrama, a bit of a melodrama from Pandora. Oh, we all we all know what happened with her, don't we?

[00:03:44]Uh the D minor symphony for strings only, Opus three number five, is also brilliant. These are very intense minor key works. I mean, really, you know, we're talking Mozart Haydn intensity, really serious minor key works. And unlike Haydn, um Beck does not make reference to other musics. He's he's almost entirely forward-looking. Haydn was very open and integrative in his approach. Beck is more like Mozart, a little bit more hermetically sealed in his idiom, but it's a a a very personal and thoroughly realized idiom. Let's put it that way.

[00:04:23]Uh symphony number symphony in F major opus 4 number 3 has a delicious minuet. It's called Minuetto Villanesco.

[00:04:32]Villanesco uh derives from the word for village. I mean, it means rural or countryside or, you know, it was if you want to get into what a villanella or villanesca is, it was an Italian thing from Naples.

[00:04:45]You know, it's like many terms in classical music. It has like a zillion different meanings, depending on where you are, but the basic term and what you hear in this particular minuet is a certain rustic quality, which is really interesting, but it doesn't sound like folk music. Uh unlike Haydn, who would sound like folk music. You know, you've got kind of suggestions of drone basses, and you have some some, you know, stomping rhythms, but it's not quite supposedly evoking that. I mean, it it's very interesting. You got to hear it. It it doesn't sound like anybody else. So, hey, he was a a wonderful composer, and um it's great music. What can I tell you?

[00:05:26]And these are fine performances. The only quibble I have about these period instrument performances is that they do employ a harpsichord continuo, and I I I to my mind, to excess it sometimes in the slow movements with like repeated notes on baselines and things like that, where they ought to just like give it a rest to create a little bit more temporal interest. But I can't argue with the the intensity of the performances, the character of the performances. They're really well recorded, and the music itself is first-class music of the classical period. So, if you like music of the classical period, if you've enjoyed the Haydn Symphony Crusade, if you like early Mozart, get this because this is music that's just as good. It really is just as good.

[00:06:12]Um it deserves to be heard more frequently. So, keep on listening, friends. Thanks for joining me. Take care.