Moritz MOSZKOWSKI (1854-1925)
Deuxième Suite d’Orchestre, Op. 47 (1890) [41:06]
Troisième Suite d’Orchestre, Op.79 (1908) [26:54]
Sinfonia Varsovia/Ian Hobson
rec. 2019, Witold Lutosławski Concert Hall (S1), Polish Radio, Warsaw
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0557 [68:00]
This is the second volume (see review of Volume one) in Toccata’s series of discs devoted to Moritz Moszkowski’s orchestral music. Though primarily known for his scintillating piano pieces, he wrote large-scale works for the violin and relatively plentifully for orchestral forces too, so this expertly directed survey – the Second Suite of 1890 is heard in its first recording, the Third Suite in its first digital recording – opens another vista on the composer’s art.
The Second Suite was composed in 1890 and is cast in six movements. Moszkowski proves an expert orchestrator throughout - not for nothing did Messager send his young pupil, Thomas Beecham, to Moszkowski for advice in the art – and you can be assured of plenty of colour and spice. Try the opening Prelude, its turbulent melancholia fusing with a harp interlude and a religioso organ passage in music of gravity and breadth. A second movement Fugue reveals a liking for baroque procedure whilst the Scherzo introduces an element of Moszkowskian frivolity, almost a pleasure to encounter, and never too obvious. The Larghetto is the work’s central point, and shows a lineage strongly oriented toward Raff – it’s like a Raff symphonic slow movement – though it may also strike listeners as sounding a little like a piece of the lighter Elgar; dignified, scrupulously well balanced and affecting. Though the notes talk of the proto-filmic and, indeed, Elgar in the work’s final March it strikes me as altogether more Meistersingers-like in its confidence and command.
The Third Suite followed in 1908 and is a more compact affair given the Second Suite lasts a good 41-minutes. The four well-balanced movements explore discrete pleasures. There’s the woodland nuances of the Allegro opening, once more sounding robustly confident and Elgarian to British ears – though this is likely to be purely coincidental. The play of winds is bewitching in the second movement whilst the third panel is an elegant waltz, full of lilt and ingratiating charm. Bluff, bright and lively the work’s finale is typical of Moszkowski’s healthy, outdoorsy muse.
He’s not a composer for whom depths are there to be plumbed. Rather, he’s a spinner of tunes and character, served up in ingratiating orchestrations that exist to please and titillate. It’s nearly a century since his death in 1925 – he died in destitution - and this series, affectionately played and directed, is doing much to bring his charming, uncomplicated orchestral music to wider notice.
Jonathan Woolf
