The Sinfonietta Riga, with Florian Donderer - Solo Violin & Conductor
https://youtu.be/sC-AlDExpp4?si=GP2-7yvS55EBWX3J
Delicious - thank you very much! Probably better than the recording on cpo?
I think so, but I can't put my finger on why, better phrasing?
A better orchestra and a more expressive soloist, maybe?
It's a distinct improvement on cpo's - the soloist just brings so much more life to the piece and the orchestral contribution is more nuanced and dynamically varied.
What a pity this hasn't been recorded and released commercially. The Riga Sinfonietta have mostly done contemporary repertoire, but they'd be sensational in late classical/early romantic music...
Having listened a few times to this performance I'm afraid that, good though it is, it doesn't make the music any more memorable - for me at least. The finale has an earworm theme, but the first two movements don't strike me as Ries at his best. Still, it's an early work.
I tend to agree, but I'm a sucker for violin concertos - and I enjoyed watching the soloist so patently finding joy in performing the music.
I am a Ries fan, but even I would rate the violin concerto 'engaging' rather than 'great.' The drama is of a domestic, Biedermeier, scale. But then, I don't always want to be moved to the core by great beauty or tragedy, sometimes I just want 'engaging.' The opening theme of the finale may perhaps be too good, as it obliterates in my recollection of the piece all the other themes. It sounds like many of the other folk influenced themes Ries later used for finales.
In general I don't find Ries' music really 'grabs' me anyway. At his best he's very much 'school of Beethoven" - he's fun, often exhilarating, but does he ever hit the heights? I'm not so sure.
Oh yes he hits the heights, especially in motivic and harmonic development. The A minor symphony, the C sharp minor Concerto, the C major String Quintet, and the F minor Quartet are good examples of his 'heights.' I suspect his virtues are more Classical than Romantic.
You may well be right. I do enjoy his music, though.
I very much enjoy the vigour of the later symphonies and concertos and don't mind in the slightest Ries' very clear debt to Beethoven. Thanks for the chamber music recommendations, Hector.
Speaking personally, I prefer the greater individuality of, say, Franz Krommer - especially his very late 9th Symphony.
That's interesting,Alan. That might explain why I listen to Ries and find his piano concertos pleasant enough (and his symphonies too,but to a lesser extent),but there's always a sense of anticipation when I turn to the symphonies of Krommer.
Krommer retains more of his own identity, I think - rather than recycling Beethoven's idiom, as Ries does (in his own manner, of course). I particularly like his writing for the brass.
Krommer has real individuality, I do agree.
Krommer is of a an earlier generation, though, born in 1759, just three years after Mozart. Ries (b. 1784) immediately follows Beethoven, and I think should be compared more to Czerny (b. 1791), and perhaps also Loewe (b. 1796), both of whom sound far more adventurous to me.
But Krommer was composing his later symphonies contemporaneously with Ries, and his music sounds to me as if he had journeyed quite a long way from his first efforts,which predate those of Ries. The one that Ries penned ,to try and win the prize which Franz Lachner carried off (Nicolai coming second), seems particularly characterless,compared to the last symphony that Krommer composed.
As for the Ries violin concerto,I feel that he was still "learning his trade".
Krommer's 9th was written in 1830 and actually post-dates all of Ries' symphonies except one! He may have been born a long time before Ries, but he is properly considered as his older contemporary.
I think this says more about Krommer's ability to explore new paths and Ries' relative failure (or unwillingness) to do so. If you go from the latter's 1st to 8th symphony there's not a whole lot of progression, while Krommer's 9th arguably sounds more modern than either of Ries' symphonies. In fact, it already comes quite close to what his (near-)compatriot Kalliwoda, despite being more than forty years his junior, was up to at the time. Quite a remarkable degree of artistic progression.
I think the quite the opposite, that Ries' symphonies are more engaging than Krommer's, but then I never seem to agree with the consensus on this forum ( & this may be developing into a different thread than Ries' Violin Concerto)
I think Ilja's right. In Ries, by contrast with Beethoven, there isn't a great sense of stylistic development over time - whereas, for example, the longer-lived Krommer's symphonies were written over a period of more than 30 years and show remarkable progression.
Anyway, as Hector suggests, this is really a thread about Ries' VC - which sounds to me less advanced in idiom than Beethoven's (or, say, VC1 by Franz Clement, for that matter). Nevertheless, it's a fine piece which I have thoroughly enjoyed in the Donderer/Riga performance.