Reznicek, Emil Nikolaus von

Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek

Symphony No. 4 in F minor (1919)

(b. Vienna, 4 May 1860 – d. Berlin, 2 August 1945)

I Moderato pesante (p. 3) – Tranquillo, dasselbe Zeitmaß etwas weniger straff (p. 14) – Tempo I (p. 16)
II Trauermarsch auf den Tod eines Komödianten. Tempo di marcia funebre (p. 28)
III Allegro molto (p. 48) – Poco meno allegro (p. 54) – Coda (p. 58)
IV Variationen-Finale. Moderato un poco maestoso (p. 61) – Allegro vivace (p. 66) – Tempo I (p. 70) –
Allegro molto con fuoco (p. 73) – Meno allegro (p. 76) – Andante con grazia (p. 77) –
Allegro ma non troppo (p. 79) – Maestoso, nicht schleppen (p. 85)

Preface (by Christoph Schlüren, Mai 2016)

In a bitter irony of history, Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek is commonly called a “one-work composer” – an appellation that he shares with Otto Nicolai, Henry Litolff, Amilcare Ponchielli, Max Bruch, Emmanuel Chabrier, Alfredo Catalani, Pablo de Sarasate, Paul Taffanel, August Klughardt, Engelbert Humperdinck, Christian Sinding, Jaromír Weinberger, Carl Orff, and Alexander Arutiunjan, not to mention such masters of his era as Paul Dukas and Edward MacDowell. Music-lovers know his effervescent “Donna Diana” Overture, recorded even by Karajan, but otherwise nothing else from his pen. Yet Reznicek was an outstanding composer in a generation that included Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, a generation that brought to full flower the tradition of the “composer-conductor,” particularly in the German-speaking countries, and raised the art of the large late-romantic orchestra to its zenith. Other names worthy of mention in this context are Siegmund von Hausegger, Paul Büttner, Felix Woyrsch, Hans Pfitzner, Hermann Suter, Alexander Zemlinsky, Hermann Hans Wetzler, Max Reger, Franz Schreker, Max von Schillings, Felix Weingartner, Paul Graener, Max Fiedler, and Georg Schumann. Among these figures, Reznicek was one of the most original and inventive, the equal of Strauss and Mahler both in his craftsmanship and in his effectively dramatic tone poems. It is much more than his unquestionably sensational orchestration that makes his music timeless and fascinating even today. Reznicek was a brilliant artistic chameleon, a master of the unpredictable and unforeseen. He is often so subtle and multi-layered that the psychological complexity of his personality may perhaps itself pose an obstacle to the unimpeded popularity of his music. His great tone poems, such as Schlemihl or Der Sieger, are of an inexhaustible multifariousness that makes them difficult to describe. They stand on a par with the masterworks of Strauss, whose fall from these heights is, however, all the greater in every work. Simply put, it is impossible to misconstrue such luxuriant, expansive, highly intricate tone poems as Thus Spake Zarathustra, Don Quixote, Ein Heldenleben, or Symphonia domestica. Symphonic poems, it is fair to conclude, are a bit like operas: they must convey their story clearly without need of explanation. But Reznicek was not just a complex composer of operas and program music; he was equally adept as a symphonist who managed to contribute no fewer than five fully-fledged, highly contrasting works to the genre and even bequeathed to posterity five masterly string quartets. The hitch was that no one wanted to take this prankster, ironist, and humorist seriously in the loftiest genres of instrumental music – genres whose sublimity was measured against late Beethoven and his successors Brahms and Bruckner. Again and again Reznicek enjoyed one or another rousing but short-lived success; yet lasting popularity was bestowed only upon the overture to his fourth opera Donna Diana, the work that occasioned his breakthrough in 1894. The more successful it was, the more thoroughly it dominated the one-sided image of a witty, elegant composer whose many other facets were noted only by true connoisseurs.

Read full preface / Komplettes Vorwort lesen > HERE