This coming Wednesday evening, 8pm, BR-Klassik will broadcast Karl Weigl's 3rd Symphony and the Adagio movement of No. 4:
http://www.br.de/radio/br-klassik/programmkalender/sendung-909066.html (http://www.br.de/radio/br-klassik/programmkalender/sendung-909066.html)
I'll have a listen as I'm not familiar with him.
Tom :)
I wonder if this might mean a cpo release at some point?
Sdtom- we have or had a lot of Karl Ignaz Weigl's music (symphonies, quartets, viola sonata, concertos) in the "Downloads section". Might not still be there though. Austrian composer, emigrated to the USA, dates 1881-1949.
(I presently have his rather ... Mahler-sized 1st symphony (in E, published 1908 by Universal Edition) on loan from the Free Library of Philadelphia (which has scores & parts to a whole lot of his works in their Fleisher Collection, which doesn't interloan to individuals, just to orchestras & such. I put on a fake mustache and violin strings...))
My guess would be that BIS, which already has two Weigl symphonies (5 & 6) on CDs, might be more likely to issue the recording than cpo, but who knows?...
I'll have a check and see what is there. Thanks for the tip.
Tom :)
Any chance of someone taping & uploading the symphony, though I ask as shouldn't I suppose... I think I may be at work at 8pm CET... (I know, I know, it's from 1931, but his style generally speaking tends to be within our remit - I think - such things as the opening of his 5th symphony notwithstanding (a tuning-up section worthy of Ives- or Schnittke (sym.1) - iirc...)
As I am quite keen to hear this myself, I'll try to record and upload it. My satellite receiver has been quite unpredictable of late, so the recording may come to nothing...
Keep us posted as I'm wanting to listen for sure. I wish you luck.
Tom
The announcer said that these recordings were made in coproduction with cpo and will be released shortly. Therefore I will not upload my recordings.
No. 3 took about 48 minutes, only the third movement of No. 4 (14 min.) was recorded and broadcast due to the problematic state of the manuscript.
Both works have never been performed before.
if a CD is coming out, then at worst, I can buy it sometime or hear it on the radio (maybe when Radio Stephansdom is playing their "night full of 3rd (or other #) symphonies" - they do that once-a-while, with some offbeat choices- and they webstream) - etc. - so - might hear it sometime anyway; good news, thanks! (Even though, as per usual complaint, cpo takes awhile, yes, yes...)
According to Davison, Stephen: The Music of Karl Weigl (1881-1949): a catalog, Symphony 3's 3 movements are Allegro molto, Adagio, Allegro; Symphony No.4 in F minor's (1936) 3 movements are 2 Allegro moderatos (unfortunately unrecoverable according to these reports) followed by Finale. Adagio. All 6 of his symphonies have now been performed in some form... (except for those 2 movements of the 4th) - the first in 1910, the 2nd was at least performed in its original 5-movement version in Bochum on May 2 1924, the 5th was premiered by Stokowski on 27 October 1968 in Carnegie Hall (American Symphony) and the 5th and 6th have been recorded by BIS.
Does anybody know if the 3rd movement of the 4th will also be included on the cpo disc?
The slow movement of Weigl's Symphony No.2 (his grandest symphonic work that is sometimes called Pro Defunctis) was performed in 1989 at the University of Chicago. The entire symphony is inspired by the tragedy of the first World War, and the slow movement is a dirge specifically titled "Pro Defunctis". I'll see if I can upload that performance. It is not such a good performance, perhaps due to the great difficulty of the music generally and a lack of sufficient rehearsal specifically. Tempos are off, but at least you will be able to hear the music.
Very kind. Thank you.
As to the finale of sym. 4, I think someone mentioned that cpo intends to include that, too.
If this repertoire was to appear on a cd, it appears to be a chimera. If anyone possesses a recording of the broadcast, would they consider uploading it for us?
Hello minacciosa,
I've recorded that broadcast and can post the two works this weekend until cpo will release them on CD some 10 years later ...
Best,
mjk
Thanks in advance on behalf of us all.
Thanks you very much!!!
Hello,
I've just posted my Weigl recordings in the Downloads section, waiting to be approved by the administrators
Best, mjkF
Duly approved - with many thanks.
Thank you so very much!
The Cello Concerto will apparently be recorded for CPO with Raphael Wallfisch and the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Milton.
What does [Symphony No. 4 - 2 Allegro Moderato's] Unrecoverable mean? I ask because the composer website http://www.karlweigl.org mentions bound full score and parts available.
See my post in this thread 4/23/2015 k? (Edit: 1:15 am, not later the day.)
Ok. I was referring to the information below.... maybe I'm reading it wrong or it's not correct info.
http://www.karlweigl.org/works.php?work=4
The 4th Symphony full score does exist at NYPL. I saw a version of it years ago, but it wasn't in Weigl's hand; it was a WPA copyist edition from the Fleischer Collection. I remember thinking it may have been unfinished because there was something odd about it. The question remains if the holograph at the library is truly complete. I will try to find out.
The Cello Concerto was recorded earlier this month in Germany. It will be issued along with other concertos by Gal, Reizenstein, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Goldschmidt as a collection of works by suppressed composers.
Re 4th symphony: good.
Btw: I note that the upload is in flac format. I wonder whether we could request that, as a general rule, uploads could be in mp3 format?
QuoteBtw: I note that the upload is in flac format. I wonder whether we could request that, as a general rule, uploads could be in mp3 format?
I could also provide the tracks as .mp3 files.
Just for myself I prefer .flac in such cases, because the original recording has been in some lossy format (maybe .aac or even .mp
2,
I actually don't remember !!), and transcoding this to a different lossy format normally isn't quite a good idea.
However, I don't want to pretend that this has been a "lossless" (i.e. CD quality) recording.
Best, mjkF
That's fine. Don't worry. It's just that mp3 files are easiest for most people. And please accept our sincere thanks for your upload - the music is wonderful.
I've just added mp3s of mjkFenrich's recording to his post in the Downloads Board.
Great. Symphony No.3 is heavily indebted to Mahler to my ears, although it's more athletic and less inclined to agonised introspection. If and when it appears on cpo, it'll make a fine addition to the recorded repertoire.
Wonder tangentially if there's a large-scale published study of Weigl's music that puts each work in context of the others, noting related themes between works among other things. I've skimmed the work catalog that was published some years back but not the same thing...
There's this website...
http://karlweigl.org/ (http://karlweigl.org/)
Weigl was as self-referential a composer as Strauss, Mahler or Korngold. Particularly in melodic shapes, there is an intervallic motive that occurs in nearly all of his mature music. It is comprised of a falling forth followed by a whole step. It can appear anywhere in a melodic statement; it famously begins the 5th Symphony.
https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/9666688--karl-weigl-symphony-no-3
Here's a new recording on Capriccio slated for the next January, coupled with a Symphonic Prelude to a Tragedy.
Looks like the probable CPO release will be overtaken.
Thanks - excellent news.
This is now listed as being scheduled for release on January 3 2025, and audio samples are available at Presto. The symphonic prelude of 1933 (https://karlweigl.org/works.php?work=5) was according to the link inspired by "Miracles around Verdun" (Wunder um Verdun) by Hans Chlumberg (1897-1930) (they have his name spelled so very wrong it took me awhile to figure that out.)
Symphony No.3 in B flat is a 46-minute three-movement work which, if it had been in four movements, may well have ended up as a one-hour monster. I'd say that the orchestration is more like Mahler than Strauss or Schmidt, so this is yet another fine example of the way late-romanticism in music actually extended well into the twentieth century (the Symphony was written in 1930/1).
We are now in a position to chart the progress in central Europe of a broad tradition of symphonic writing post-Bruckner/Mahler that includes Büttner, Schmidt, Weigl, Petersen and Stöhr. And in Weigl's Symphony No.3 we have, I believe, one of his finest contributions to this tradition.
Oh, and as usual, this recording is yet another tribute to the excellence of German regional orchestras, in this case the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pflalz of Ludwigshafen am Rhein in the south-west of the country, under conductor Jürgen Bruns who has already given us Weigl's 1st, 4th and 6th Symphonies. Congratulations to Capriccio and all the artists involved.
Somewhat typically, Capriccio managed to release Bruns' recording of this symphony before cpo did the same with the older Gaudenz recording (which was the reason to start this thread). That was excellent, and I'm really curious to compare the two.
Also, I hope that someone will take on Weigl's 2nd; Karlweigl.org lists it as 45 minutes in length, but considering that the 3rd and 4th movement combined are close to 40 minutes already, this suggests that the other three are either very short indeed or that someone made an error.
Quote from: Ilja on Saturday 04 January 2025, 22:08Somewhat typically, Capriccio managed to release Bruns' recording of this symphony before cpo
As you say, this is a typical cpo problem. Still waiting for Weismann VC1...
This release is a fine testament to Weigl's rather Mahler-derived idiom (think Symphony No.7), although I'd say that his style is more impressive for its colourful orchestration than its thematic distinctiveness. Definitely worth a punt, however...
I have moved the discussion about Weigl's Symphony No.2 to the Composers & Music board:
https://www.unsungcomposers.com/forum/index.php/topic,9684.msg99320.html#new