Includes work(s) by Hans Rott. Ensemble: Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Dennis Russell Davies.

Classical Music

‘Yes, he is so related to my very self that he and I are like two fruits from the same tree, produced by the same soil and fed by the same air.’ (Gustav Mahler) The premiere of the Symphony No. 1 in E major by Hans Rott, written more than 100 years earlier, in 1989 introduced the international music world to a composer who had been unknown or known only by name even to most pundits. His colleagues and friends included the one or two-year younger composers Gustav Mahler and Hugo Wolf. Besides Wagner, Bruckner was the most important model for Rott’s first symphonic work. The symphony is the summum opus the not quite twenty-year-old left behind. It is his first and final finished major work. It is the synthesis of what he had written to date and a proclamation of what might have come.

REVIEW:

Christopher Ward is a young and ambitious conductor who already has a burgeoning CV, especially in opera. I hope that he continues also to tackle rare repertoire like this, as, on the whole, he has delved deep inside the character and style of this composer and I’m sure, with the help of such a fine orchestra as the Gürzenich he can do so again.

– MusicWeb International

‘It simply cannot be gauged what music has lost with him’ (Gustav Mahler) Hans Rott was a composer from Gustav Mahler’s time who had been unknown or known only by name even to most pundits. Many people have expressed the opinion, perhaps justifiably, that only his tragic fate prevented him from going down in the annals of music as Mahler’s equal and establishing a permanent position in the repertoire. A member of Bruckner’s circle within the music scene in Vienna, he developed a pronounced antipathy towards Johannes Brahms. In view of many of his works, it is difficult to comprehend that during Rott’s lifetime presumably not one of them was performed in public, but that only presentations took place under the aegis of internal conservatory events. With these recordings Capriccio attend to fill the gap with his (some of them reconstructed) orchestral works and document these fascinating worlds of music for the eternity.

REVIEW:

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.

– MusicWeb International

The Austrian bass Günther Groissböck enchants on the opera and concert stages around the world with the unique noble sound of his voice and virtually breathtaking verve of performance. Together with Malcolm Martineau, who is recognized worldwide as one of the leading piano accompanists of his generation, Groissböck presents on the album “Nicht Wiedersehen!” incomparable interpretations of late Romantic songs and ballads by Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and Hans Rott.

The duo pays homage to passion in Strauss songs such as “Zueignung”, “Allerseelen” or “Breit' über mein Haupt”, or leaves the audience rather thoughtful with “Der Einsame”, “Das Thal” or “Befreit”. Hans Rott, who died at a young age, can be heard in “Wandrer’s Nachtlied”, “Geistesgruß” and “Der Sänger”. Groissböck also brings the tragic characters in Mahler’s songs “Revelge”, “Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz’”, “Tamboursg’sell” or “Nicht wiedersehen!” to life in an incomparable way, before this great recording promises a transcendental end with “Urlicht”.

The founder of the new symphony as I understand it - Gustav Mahler, on Hans Rott Hans Rott inspired Gustav Mahler with his highly ambitious Brucknerian dimensions symphony however he fell mentally ill at a young age and died soon after. Not many recordings are available of Rott's music but are becoming more freqent in modern day.

The gifted Austrian composer Hans Rott (1858-1884) has become a figure of note in our day due mainly to his only completed and very fine youthful Symphony in E major(1880), the centerpiece of the present recording. The highlight of this disc however, comes in the form of the first recording of his eleven-song cycle for baritone, Balde Ruhest du Auch!' adapted for orchestra by the composer Enjott Schneider. Baritone Michael Volle sings; Hansjörg Albrecht leads the Munich Symphony.

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REVIEW:

This new account under review comes from the Münchner Symphoniker and conductor Hansjörg Albrecht. Beautifully recorded, it has the distinction of clocking up the speediest timings yet in three of the symphony's four movements. It also, thereby, achieves the fastest overall duration so far on disc. Albrecht's distinctly lean and muscular approach offers, in fact, something of an antidote to some other accounts which, to greater or lesser degrees, have inflated the score into something rather more portentous or even grandiloquent, as if acknowledging its perceived status as a sort of Mahlerian Holy Grail.

– MusicWeb International