Eduard Lassen

[Alan Howe]

Thanks. I think the way into Lassen would be a CD of the songs available on IMSLP...

[Ilja]

The entire Festival Overture (in the recording Eric mentioned) can be heard on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbpI218hcY

[Simon]

Listening to the Festival Overture, am I the only one thinking of Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture? There seems to be some influence here...

[eschiss1]

A new edition/reprint of the Festive Overture Op.51 (there are two Festive Overtures by Lassen at least, but I assume Op.51 is the one meant? The other is from some years before, without op.no. ...) is out from MPH this year- link to preface. (One of two works by Lassen that MPH publishes, the other being a Beethoven Overture.)

[semloh]

>Listening to the Festival Overture, am I the only one thinking of Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture? >There seems to be some influence here...

Simon, yes, Wagner in all but name; and, even in this old recording, an enjoyable piece! If only we could hear the symphonies and Violin Concerto..... maybe one day.

[pcc]

The Lassen overture was well enough regarded to have one complete and two abridged acoustical Columbia recordings released before the 1923 Ganz/St. Louis version for Victor appeared. The first was a 1-side cut version by the Russian Symphony Orchestra of New York under Modest Altschuler (1912); the second by Columbia's house orchestra led by Charles A. Prince, complete on two sides (1915), and finally another 1-side cut version by the Cincinnati Symphony under Eugène Ysaÿe (1919). Of the four versions, St. Louis's is the best performance, and the Cincinnati reading is the most ragged, if enthusiastic; Ysaÿe wasn't the greatest orchestral disciplinarian, and the orchestra (and Cincinnati itself) had gone through a major upset less than two years earlier with the arrest, internment, and eventual deportation as an enemy alien of its previous conductor, the German-born Ernst Kunwald.

The piece was also recorded several times in band versions in Europe before 1925, but not in the US.

[Mark Thomas]

It's good to hear some of Lassen's orchestral music at long last in that astonishingly clear 1921 recording of the overture. The melody with which it starts and which is blasted out ff at the end is very familiar, but I can't place it. Is it a German folk song or other traditional piece, does anyone know?.

[Mark Thomas]

Answered my own question! The overture's full title is Fest-Ouvertüre, über ein thüringisches Volkslied, and it was published in 1875. That same year Raff composed his fourth Orchestral Suite: From Thuringia, and its fourth movement is Variations on a Folk Song, which turns out to be the same Thuringian folk song used by Lassen as the basis for his Overture. The song, by the way is Treue Liebe (Faithful Love).

[Alan Howe]

How interesting! Good bit of research there, Mark.

[Mark Thomas]

  Thanks. Well, no wonder the melody is familiar to me!

[vicharris]

There is a performance of Eduard Lassen's Violin Concerto on YouTube now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scO_ryQacPo&list=WL&index=7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMBpOYSjWQI&list=WL&index=2

[Alan Howe]

Thanks! How marvellous. Can anyone rip the audio and upload it here, please? This is a definite candidate for Hyperion's RVC series.

Here are the details:

Eduard Lassen (1830-1904)
Concerto for violin and orchestra in D major, op. 87 (1891)

1. Allegro moderato
2. Andante cantabile
3. Allegro risoluto e capriccioso

Jiří Vodička (violin)
Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Ostrava
Heiko Mathias Förster

XXII International Janáček Music Festival in Hukvaldy, Czech Republic: 5th July 2015

[Alan Howe]

The VC is an absolutely glorious piece, by the way. Do please give it a listen on YouTube and post your reactions...

[Mark Thomas]

Oh, wonderful! I really look forward to hearing this when I get home from my trip.

[Alan Howe]

Where has this piece been all my life? Just what is the point of continually playing and re-recording the (very) few standard romantic VCs when something as wonderfully melodious and utterly memorable as this has been gathering dust? The public would absolutely love it - if only they got the chance to sample it...