Déjà Review: this review was first published in January 2007 and the recording is still available.
Julius Röntgen (1855-1932)
Symphony No. 3 in C minor (1910)
Suite Aus Jotunheim (1892/93)
Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/David Porcelijn
rec. 2005, Philharmonie, Ludwigshafen, Germany
cpo 777 119-2 [58]
cpo proffer the first of another epic series of recordings of rarely performed music. I hope that this will signal the rebirth of appreciation of the music of Dutch composer Julius Röntgen.
On the showing of the Third Symphony his musical creative skills are wide-ranging. They encompass the pleasingly ethereal and paschal peace of the Andante as well as the ability to conjure with blazing conviction a magnificently rampant surge. This can be experienced through the memorable first movement which together with the last is redolent in its strongest moments – of which there are many – of the Fourths of Brahms and Schumann and of Beethoven’s Eroica. Röntgen is also good at Schubertian tension and the sort of darkly sustained funereal gravity you can hear in Sibelius’s In Memoriam. Speaking of influences listen for the Brucknerian scherzo in the Presto feroce and Smetana’s Vltava in the finale. Rontgen packs the score with deeply satisfying writing for the brass desks and you can hear this, often discreetly, in the finale. Congratulations to cpo’s Gunter Appenheimer for producing such fine leonine sound. The Third Symphony is, I suppose, old-fashioned for 1910. Rontgen’s revered forebears are worn on the sleeve but when the effect is as strong as this they can be forgiven – and what is to forgive?
The Aus Jotunheim suite was dedicated to Edvard and Nina Grieg for their 25th wedding anniversary. It’s a five movement suite that is serene and kindly in the Lento and the Andante as well as stompingly raw and folksy in the Vivo and Allegro. Röntgen’s sincerity is indubitable: he ends the suite with a soothing Lento to which he adds fjord freshness with a violin solo touched with Nordic wistfulness. It is very much an affectionate and gentle dance suite in pastel Griegian tone with a touch of the bucolic from the Dvořak Slavonic Dances, all lightly updated.
cpo have announced that they will be recording all the symphonic works written by Röntgen on ten CDs. This pathfinder for the series does not disappoint; quite the contrary.
Rob Barnett
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