Orchestra de la Svizzera Italiana, Howard Shelley - Spohr: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5, Das Befreite Deutschland (2008) CD-Rip

Symphony No 4 was quickly acclaimed as the composer’s symphonic masterpiece after its first performance. It is a forward-looking, programmatic work based on a poem by Carl Pfeiffer, ‘The Consecration of Sounds’. Unusually, it features a slow finale, and in this way was an important example to future composers including Tchaikovsky and Mahler. Symphony No 5 is a deeply felt work, pouring out pent-up emotions from dramatic events in the composer’s life at the time of writing with real expressive power.

The disc also features the overture to a cantata Das befreite Deutschland (‘Germany liberated’), composed following Napoleon’s disastrous defeat at the battle of Leipzig in October 1813.

In this second volume of Spohr’s symphonies, Howard Shelley and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana continue their exploration of this enjoyable and little-known repertoire. Formerly one of the most significant personalities in nineteenth-century German music, Spohr’s symphonies were as popular as those of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven until he fell from fashion in the later part of the nineteenth century.