Hans ROTT (1858-1884)
Hamlet Overture (1876, reconstr. Johannes V Schmidt) [10:47]
Suite in E major (1878) [9:04]
Suite in B flat major (1877) [6:08]
Prelude to Julius Caesar (1877) [7:19]
Orchestral Prelude in E major (1876) [3:57]
Pastoral Prelude in F major (1880) [14:29]
Gürzenich Orchestra Cologne/Christopher Ward
rec. 2020, Studio Stolberger Strasse, Cologne, Germany
CAPRICCIO C5408 [51:44]
You will probably be aware of the stir caused by the much-delayed premiere in 1989 of Hans Rott’s First Symphony, composed in 1880, and the subsequent recordings of the work. The putative influence of the Viennese-born Rott on the Moravian Mahler was much discussed at the time and continues to resonate, albeit on a much more muted level, though Mahler’s comment that he and Rott ‘seem to me like two fruits from the same tree’ has not lost its power. This disc of some of Rott’s very earliest pieces – though due to his early demise, most of the works are perforce youthful – will not add materially to that debate but in turn suggest very strongly the lasting influence of Wagner on the young man.
Orchestral suites, preludes and Shakespeare-inspired overtures dominate the works conceived during the years 1876-80. The overture to Hamlet exists in only partial form and has been reconstructed by Johannes Volker Schmidt. Its melancholy opening panel is followed by a more roistering section and whilst the sleeve note wisely reminds the reader that one can’t ascribe any incidents or characterisation specifically – Rott left no such notes to link passages with personages – surely that yielding melody first for winds, then for horns and finally for the strings’ burgeoning romance is an ‘Ophelia’ theme. Here there’s a proto-filmic, almost Korngoldian opulence. Elsewhere Rott mines Meistersinger for superficial excitements – he was a Wagner-Brucknerian - and tries to package his material into a kind of Lisztian tone poem cum overture.
The Prelude to Julius Caesar was written the following year but was possibly, like Hamlet, intended to be part of a larger canvas, never to be completed. The fervour engendered by his recent visit to Bayreuth must have coursed through his musical veins with immediate effect as, once again, it’s not fanciful, I hope, to detect a yielding Desdemona theme amidst the surrounding charge of Lohengrin-and-Meistersinger influence. More compact than Hamlet and ending somewhat indeterminately it too reveals strengths – dramatic intensity – whilst also showing too great a reliance on Wagnerian precedent, such as to stifle a personal voice, though he was hardly alone in failing to absorb, rather than to import, Wagnerian models into his music.
Both these works show far more charge to them than the too-dutiful Suites. The E major is lucid and refined with extrovert qualities to balance. The B flat major suite is a torso, consisting of a Scherzo, with dull passagework, and a fugal-fixated finale, seemingly designed to show his technical chops. It seems Rott, insufficiently inspired, simply gave up on the other two movements.
The longest work is the Pastoral Prelude in F major, written when he was 22, though it had occupied him, on and off for three years. Here the Wagnerian elements are less insistent and obvious and whilst clear, are better integrated. There’s a post-Beethoven approach to birdsong, the one thing here that will alert listeners to Mahler’s similar use of this idea, and indeed Rott’s aviary is bountifully stocked. Alpine horn vistas and darker coloration before an extensively worked out fugue foreshadow a confident and unexpected use of percussion. Rott packs a punch here and if the technique is not yet advanced enough to assimilate the themes and tropes, he shows a warm-hearted confident handling of episodes.
The young British conductor Christopher Ward directs Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra in Capriccio’s first volume of Rott’s orchestral works with obvious commitment and makes no attempt to batten down the Wagnerian elements that course so freely; nor should he. With a thoughtfully balanced recording and concise notes this is a revealing document of Rott’s music, and the reconstruction of the Hamlet overture has the advantage of being heard in its world premiere recording.
Jonathan Woolf
