Live recording from Stockholm's Berwald Hall.
Gitta-Maria Sjöberg & Lars-Erik Jonsson Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Swedish Radio Choir & Swedish Radio Orchestra, Manfred Honeck The reputation that Walter Braunfels enjoys today falls far short
of the high regard in which he was held during the 1920s, when
he was seen as one of Germany's leading composers, his name
frequently mentioned in the same breath as those of Richard
Strauss and Franz Schreker.As with Schreker, the National
Socialists' stigmatised his music as 'degenerate' and even his
greatest triumphs, including the Aristophanic opera Die Vögel, were suppressed, and although he was
rehabilitated after 1945, he was unable to repeat his earlier triumphs.There is an especially bitter irony to the
fact that one of his greatest successes during his lifetime, his Te Deum Op. 32, was written in the context of his
conversion to Catholicism as a response to the horrors of the First World War.This is a large-scale choral
work filled with reminiscences of Wagner, but unlike Parsifal, Braunfels' music does not subscribe to the idea of
art as a form of religious worship.The awed and awe-inspiring sounds, the threatening march rhythms
heralding the Day of Judgement and the passages which, filled with hope, hold out the promise of redemption
in Paradise - all of this is clothed in a compelling musical form that goes far beyond the piece's historical
background.The baton is wielded by Stuttgart's new general music director, Manfred Honeck, who conducted
the world première of Braunfels's final opera, Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna in Stockholm. Honeck
and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra have been hugely acclaimed throughout Europe and further
afield, such is the power of this live recording from Stockholm's Berwald Hall. |
