E. T. A. HOFFMANN Mass in d, AV 18. Miserere in b?, AV 42 • Rupert Huber, cond; Sibylla Rubens, Jutta Böhnert (sop); Rebecca Martin (mez); Thomas Cooley (ten); York Felix Speer (bs); WDR Radio Ch; WDR SO • CPO 777832 (62:01 Text and Translation)

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker? Well, not exactly, but it wouldn’t be off the mark to call E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) a polymath, for he was one of Germany’s greatest early Romantic writers of fantasy fiction and horror tales, a lawyer and a jurist, a draftsman and a caricaturist, and a music critic and serious writer on the art of music and its aesthetics. And, oh yes, by the way, did I mention that in his spare time he was a composer? His output includes a symphony, several stage works, a handful of piano sonatas, a piano trio, a harp quintet, and of course, the concerted choral-orchestral Mass and Miserere on this disc.

Hoffmann’s literary works are commonly cited as the inspiration for Schumann’s Kreisleriana and Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, but less often noted is that Hoffmann’s novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King was the basis for Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, and that Léo Delibes’s ballet Coppélia is also based on stories by Hoffmann.

Hoffmann’s literary works had more of an influence on 19th-century composers and the Romantic movement than his musical compositions did, for his abilities as a composer were judged to be more modest than his talent for the written word. Add to that his relatively small output, and it’s hardly surprising that there’s not a lot of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s music on disc. In light of this, what’s perhaps surprising is that this is at least the third recording of the Miserere I’m aware of. A performance on Koch-Schwann/Music Sacra with a different conductor and cast of vocal soloists, but the same chorus and, I believe, the same orchestra was reviewed by David Johnson in 12:4. And yet another recording, also on Koch Schwann, but this time with an entirely different cast of singers, players, and conductor—Rolf Beck, leading the Southwest German Vocal Ensemble and the Concerto Bamberg—was released in 1997, 10 years later.

Johnson was mightily impressed by the Miserere, calling it “a work of genuine, even astonishing power and beauty,” an assessment with which I wholly concur. The piece wasn’t published in Hoffmann’s lifetime, and the exact date of composition isn’t given. It can be deduced, however, that Hoffmann had to have completed it towards the end of 1806 or the beginning of 1807, for the work was to have been performed at the ceremonies earlier in 1806 when Archduke Ferdinand of Austria became the Grand Duke of Würzburg, but the score wasn’t ready in time. It didn’t receive its first performance until Good Friday, 1809.

It’s important to keep in mind when listening to this masterful piece of choral/orchestral writing that its date of composition coincides with that of Beethoven’s C-Major Mass, op. 86. Yet if I had to make a comparison to Hoffmann’s Miserere, it wouldn’t be to Beethoven’s chronologically contemporary Mass, but to a work of 17 or so years earlier, Mozart’s Requiem. Whether Hoffmann was consciously imitating the musical style of that work or not, it’s impossible to say, but the similarities are striking.

Listen to the sighs in the strings just seconds into the opening movement, and tell me you don’t expect to hear the mournful entry of the basset horns. Or tell me there isn’t a resemblance between the Miserere’s “Ecce enim in veritatem” and the Offertorium of the Requiem in the Süssmayer completion.

Understand that in no way am I diminishing Hoffmann’s effort. His Miserere is a gorgeous work, and there’s much in it that postdates Mozart stylistically, specifically the vocal solos, which tend to be more ornate and less liturgical sounding than what Mozart would have considered proper for a sacred setting of such a solemn text, and also in the more symphonic scoring and treatment of the orchestral parts. But as noted by Johnson, Hoffmann additionally takes great pains to fully demonstrate his contrapuntal skills, composing “grand choral double fugues that Bach, himself, could have found no fault with.”

However you hear Hoffmann’s Miserere—whether as an echo of Mozart, a sympathetic vibration with Beethoven, or a precursor to Verdi—it doesn’t matter, as long as you hear it, because it’s a stunning work, which really ought to spark a reassessment of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s output in general.

The Mass in D Minor is a little earlier than the Miserere, dating from between 1803 and 1805, but it’s composed on an equally grand scale. The solemn introductory measures followed by a running fugue is reminiscent of the type of Baroque overture one hears at the beginning of Handel’s Messiah, and simultaneously anticipatory of the overture to Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

As in the Miserere, Mozart looms large over major portions of the Mass. Listen, for example, to the Kyrie, which once again reverberates with recollections of Mozart’s Requiem. But now Haydn takes a bow in the joyful Gloria. Yet through it all, a new Romantic spirit infuses Hoffmann’s work. It’s not as daring as Beethoven’s adventures of the same timeframe, but then whose were?

One thing that deserves some criticism, in my opinion, is Hoffmann’s over-reliance on fugue. At first, one marvels at his aptitude for counterpoint, but when a fugue appears in practically every movement, not only does one begin to wonder if Hoffmann isn’t short on arrows in his quiver, but the recurring fugal textures begin to become a bit tiresome. Remember Saint-Saëns’s dictum: “A fugue is a piece where the voices come in and the audience goes out one at a time.”

Koch-Schwann seems to have taken more than a passing interest in E. T. A. Hoffmann back in the 1990s, for in addition to the above-cited recordings of the Miserere, the label also released a recording of this Mass in 1999, featuring the chorus and orchestra of the Capella Cracoviensis, led by Roland Bader. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard that one either, so I have no basis for comparing different versions of the works on this disc. CPO, however, rarely disappoints in its releases, and the soloists, chorus, and orchestra heard in these performances sound secure in execution and thoroughly engaged in the moment of the music. The recording, too, is excellent—open, spacious, bright, and detailed, without any reverb to muddy the singers’ diction. Very strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

TELEMANN Violin Concertos: in G, TWV 51:G5; in Bb TWV 51:B2; in F, TWV 51:F3; in A, TWV 51:A3; in f#, TWV 51:fis1. Double Violin Concerto in e, TWV 52:e4. Concerto in A for 4 Violins, TWV 54:A1 • Elizabeth Wallfisch (vn, cond); The Wallfisch Band • CPO 777 550 (58:24)


The notes to Volume 5 of violinist and conductor Elizabeth Wallfisch’s collection of “Complete Violin Concertos” by Georg Philipp Telemann explain that all these works come from an early period in the composer’s production, in which he tried to break free from the Italian influence (thus, perhaps, the unvarying four-movement pattern of these works). Still, Vivaldi’s energy, channeled by typical Italian violin figuration, reappears in the Molto allegro of the Concerto in G Major, TWV 51:G5. Arcangelo Corelli’s sequences appear in the finale of that concerto, but the passages bounce with a helium-like buoyancy worlds removed from Corelli’s more stately elegance. The Concerto in Bb-Major, TWV 51:B2, begins with a slow movement that integrates the solo into the ensemble in a way that’s more Corellian than Vivaldian—but seems essentially Telemann’s own invention. The Concerto in F Major, TWV 51:F3, drapes a flowing violin solo over a bustling near-ostinato motive that maintains a lively demeanor throughout the movement. As the ensuing Allegro shows, Telemann’s idea of a concerto soloist, especially in the fast movements (and even in the slow ones) differs markedly from that of Vivaldi and Bach, allowing the solos to emerge from the texture as Corelli did in his Concerti grossi, op. 6, or Giuseppe Torelli did even in his solo concertos. That’s not to say that the works seem soporific from the violinistic point of view: The concerto’s finale, with its brusque, ruddy energy, never allows a listener’s attention to wander, even if the violinist isn’t spinning technical fantasies in the manner of Pietro Locatelli or Jean-Marie Leclair. In the Concerto in A Major, TWV 51: A3, Wallfisch and her ensemble effectively employ dynamic contrasts to create a bracing atmosphere. Here, as elsewhere, Wallfisch rises to a high soloistic profile when the music demands it—it’s clear from passages like these that she sinks the individual, when she does, for musical reasons rather than for any natural reticence or idea of soloistic integration. She and the ensemble play the chords in the brief, almost purely transitional, Adagio with attention-garnering freshness. In the finale, she once again strikes a more virtuosic attitude. The Concerto in F# Minor may be cast in an unusual key, but it’s hardly crabbed; and Wallfisch makes the double-stops of its slow movement sound at once mellifluous and commanding. Still, she’s able to lower her profile in the contrapuntal finale.


The collection includes two concertos for multiple soloists. The first of these, the Concerto in E Minor for Two Violins, TWV 52:E4, blends the soloists seamlessly in the first movement. In this work, violinist Evan Few joins Wallfisch. They don’t engage in the second movement in simple parallel motion, as Torelli might lead them in a similarly crafted work; but they do alternate passages in which they answer each other with others in which they run side-by-side. In the Concerto for Four Violins in A Major, TWV 54:A1, violinists Gabrielle Wunsch and Susan Carpenter Jacobs join Wallfisch. If, as Wolfgang Hirschmann’s notes point out, the textures hardly suggest a concerto for four soloists (with two of them melded into the orchestral texture), the resulting sonorities still seem rich and thick in this performance.


If every one of these concertos might strike listeners as a candidate for the standard repertoire, not one of them has yet entered it. Perhaps this release may start the process of admission. Like the earlier volumes in the series, this fifth volume deserves a heartfelt commendation.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

It was a waltz that led to the success of Die Dollarprinzessin, not only in America (where the action is set) but also around the globe. Nevertheless, during it's Broadway debut the usual inserts by American composers were an absolute must, including the hornpipe quintet "A Boat Sails on Wednesday" by Jerome Kern, who until then was largely unknown. Although the New York Times found "this burlesque Apache dance" to be "very amusing," it nevertheless emphasized that "Dr. Fall's music nonetheless is situated high above such trivialities." The libretto was written by the authorial team formed by Alfred Maria Willner and Fritz Gr�nbaum. The main subject of the action: the refusal of an impoverished but proud man to let himself be bought by a woman who is just as proud but rich. The premiere on 2 November 1907 at the Theater an der Wien was loudly applauded, but the Berlin performance on 6 June 1908 became a triumph. When the five hundredth performance then was celebrated in 1909, Die Dollarprinzessin had already conquered London and New York. The 428 London performances paved the way for The Dollar Princess throughout all the colonies of the British Empire and opened the door taking it to the countries of the Romance languages, especially in South America, where La Princesa de los D�lares continues to belong to the repertoire even today!

“In any event, a more convincing case for Krommer, who is also largely forgotten as a symphonist, than the case made with this performance culture could hardly be made.” This is what Pizzicato wrote about the release of Vol. 2 of Krommer’s symphonies. Vol. 3 of this recording series completes the picture of this composer’s quest for harmonic innovations. Compared with his fifth symphony, Krommer’s sixth such work, composed two years later, has a musical language reflecting a process of radicalization. In formal and cyclical respects, however, he continues to adhere to the conventions of symphonic music of the early nineteenth century; not a single one of the four movements creates a revolutionary stir. Be this as it may, Krommer’s musical language ventures onto more rugged terrain; form and function are subject to a gradual process of dissociation. Krommer concluded the score of his ninth symphony on 17 September 1830, two months before his seventy-first birthday and only about four months prior to his death, which means that we may presume that it was one of his last compositions. After his death, however, his works no longer received attention; it is doubtful that this work was ever performed at all prior to its recording for the present release. As in the sixth symphony before it, Krommer follows convention in his ninth symphony in formal matters while offering a whole arsenal of innovative ideas by fully exploiting tonal ambivalences, pursuing new compositional paths, and separating the architectonic and functional aspects of musical form. In addition, his use of a motif of fanfare character in the first and last movements heralds the development of a motivic-cyclical design transcending movement boundaries.

Fran�ois-Adrien Boieldieu numbers among the most important exponents of the op�ra comique of the French imperial era and the subsequent restoration. With La dame blanche (1825) he even produced one of the internationally most successful works of this genre; it served as a model example for other composers and played a significant role in the further development of the op�ra comique. Fran�ois Boieldieu received his early training in music in particular from Charles Broches, the organist at the Rouen Cathedral. In 1796 he went to Paris, where he met Cherubini. From 1803 to 1811 he was the court music director in St. Petersburg, and in 1817 he became a professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory. In the overtures of his op�ras comiques Boieldieu usually anticipates thematic material from the particular opera. As a result, the overture not only prepares the listener for the atmosphere and tone color of the particular op�ra comique but also provides for a recognition effect when the themes familiar from the overture reappear in a later phase of the stage action. The great wealth of melodic invention and the pronounced melodic cantability particularly characteristic of Boieldieu's music and the Piano Concerto heard here inspired his contemporaries to call him "the French Mozart."

Today the composer Francois-Joseph Gossec is closely associated with the music of the French Revolution. However, the symphonic cycle being presented here for the first time in complete recorded form was written thirty years prior to 1789. Born on 17 January 1734 in the village of Vergnies, today’s Hainaut (Hennegau) in Belgium, Gossec’s beautiful boy soprano’s voice earned him admission to the church choirs in Walcourt and Ste. Aldegonde in Maubeuge before he became a member of the choir at the Antwerp Cathedral around 1742. He received excellent training in composition and counterpoint as well as in violin and harpsichord, moved to Paris in 1750 or 1751, and is thought to have been hired as a violinist for de la Poupliniere’s orchestra in August 1753. He remained true to this orchestra until the death of his employer in December 1762. Gossec’s some fifty symphonies doubtless make him the most important French symphonist of the second half of the eighteenth century. However, he wrote most of his symphonic works prior to about 1780; after this date the increasing popularity of Haydn’s symphonies in Paris may have caused him to lose interest in this genre. His six Symphonies op. IV appeared in print around 1758. When compared with the first series from 1756, they offer considerable innovations even in purely formal matters: they have four movements, and oboes and / or horns have been added to the instrumentation used in op. III, which was exclusively for strings. The symphonies are distinguished primarily by attention-grabbing initial displays, though the last two form exceptions to the rule. No. 5, the “Pastorella,” has a title indicating that it is a work of pastoral character, that is, of country expression, while No. 6 does not make use of the characteristic stylistic elements, such as long crescendo passages and sudden forte-piano contrasts, presumably imparted to Gossec by Stamitz. In any case, the interpretations by Simon Gaudenz and the Neuss Chamber Academy anticipate future revolutionary times.

Michael Lakner selected an absolute operetta rarity for a premiere during his last season as the director of the Lehar Festival in 2017: Kaiserin Josephine (Empress Josephine) by Emmerich Kalman. The operetta in 8 scenes by the Hungarian composer features German libretto by Paul Knepler and Geza Herczeg. It premiered in Zurich at the Stadt Theater in 1936, but has been rarely performed since then. In 1961 Eduard Macku founded the Bad Ischl Operetta Festival – today the Bad Ischl Lehár Festival – and made the Franz Lehár-Orchestra a permanent fixture of the festival. After the death of Eduard Macku Gabriel Patocs assumed conducting duties of the orchestra in Vienna, while Walter Erla was appointed conductor of the orchestra in Bad Ischl. During the festival directorship of Martin C. Turba (2000 – 2003) and Michael Lakner (2004- 2017) the Franz Lehár-Orchestra performed under such notable conductors as Franz Bauer-Theussl, Herbert Mogg, Alfred Eschwé, Wolfgang Bozic, Marius Burkert, Vinzenz Praxmarer, and Oliver Ostermann.

Before the Austro-Hungarian composer Carl Goldmark conquered the international concert halls and opera houses with his Ländliche Hochzeit and Queen of Sheba, he initially attracted attention with some chamber compositions. When his overture after the drama Sakuntula by the great Indian poet Kâlidâsa then celebrated its premiere in Vienna in December 1865, the news of this masterfully designed, tonally beautiful music spread like wildfire beyond his home terrain. In view of this trailblazing success it is not surprising that Goldmark repeatedly returned to the overture form during the course of the next twenty-five years or so. Examples here include his reflections on the tragedies involving Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons (after Heinrich von Kleist), and the Greek poetess Sappho (after Franz Grillparzer) in one-movement works that may very much be termed variants of the symphonic poem. The three female protagonists of Goldmark’s overtures are heard here along with his two Scherzos for Orchestra – works in which the composer reveals his flirtatious side.

Columbus: Dramatic Cantata for Soloists, Male Choir, Mixed Choir, and Full Orchestra op. 11, which celebrated its premiere at the Graz Music Society Concert Hall on 4 December 1870, is an extraordinary work within Heinrich von Herzogenberg’s oeuvre as a whole and differs greatly from many other compositions by him. During his younger years Herzogenberg was very much attracted to Wagner and the “New German” style – which also had an impact on his Columbus. He designed his musical occupation with this subject in an innovative manner, producing a work that is a combination of the stage and concert genres. Like Wagner, he wrote the libretto himself and did so while following the model provided by the typical four-part sequence of a drama with a presentation, an intensification, a climactic or turning point, and a resolution. After the successful premiere a review appeared in the Grazer Tagespost that is all the more interesting insofar as it was penned by Friedrich Hausegger, a member of the “progressive camp.” If we think merely of Herzogenberg as the Brahms emulator of his middle and later creative phases, then Hausegger’s words correct our one-sided picture of the composer: “We were most pleasantly surprised by his Columbus. With it the composer proved not only that he can assemble little elements, perhaps ones formed in imitation, to produce a well-formed whole but also that he can draw on impressive resources, that he is able to master a significant subject with a bold and sure hand.” Unlike his later practice with his model Brahms, in his Columbus Herzogenberg did not end up following Wagner to the extreme stylistically. However, it is precisely his thoroughly independent as well as inspired musical treatment of this subject that is a source of special fascination.

As a famous music authority and critic once wrote, the life story of the Austrian composer Franz Schreker and the reception history of his oeuvre would have offered fine material for a magnificent novel with a musician as its protagonist – if not for the fact that everything had actually occurred in real life: his childhood spent in poverty; the difficult initial path to local prominence in Vienna; the breakthrough to superstar status in German-language opera houses; his appointment as director of the Berlin College of Music; his failure to resist the seductive powers of flatterers; the gradual loss of favor among audiences and critics that many seeming friends followed with malicious spite; and then the final blow, when the new »master race« turned the world upside down – all of this was fact, not fiction. Following the release of several operas by Franz Schreker during past years on cpo (some of them in premiere recordings), our label now turns to the orchestral works of a man who in some circles continues to be dismissed as a mere »sound magician,« even though he was a melodist and harmonist of the first water and had learned his craft so thoroughly at the Vienna Conservatory that he himself became a sought-after teacher. The present program traces Schreker’s path from his studies with Robert Fuchs to his first enduring success – the captivating pantomime The Birthday of the Infanta (1908) after the fairy tale by Oscar Wilde, which definitely numbers among the finest creations of the musical art nouveau.

Friedrich Schneider: Symphony & Overtures. During his lifetime Friedrich Schneider was regarded as “the respected head of the Northern German school” and was a musical institution in Central Germany. He was active as the court music director in Dessau from 1821 until his death, and for two reasons his fame during these years was considerable: because of his wholehearted support of Beethoven’s works and because of his own compositions – in particular his oratorios. Today his Weltgericht continues to be regarded as a link between Haydn and Mendelssohn. Schneider’s Symphony No. 16 displays majestic chords, and its movements of song character win over listening audiences with their charm and naturalness while also offering their share of surprises, mirth, and high spirits. In contrast to his symphonies, which all remained unpublished and were more frequently performed only in Dessau with the composer as their conductor, his overtures for a time enjoyed great popularity far beyond his home region. Apart from his opera preludes, Friedrich Schneider wrote a total of twenty overtures, three of which are heard here.

This project featuring the complete recording of Beethoven’s piano concertos on original Beethoven fortepianos has close ties to the performances at original historical sites in Vienna. During past years the concert series “Resound Beethoven” has brought back Beethoven’s works to the places where they are documented to have been performed. It has been possible to perform and in part to record the complete cycle in halls such as the Eroica Hall in the Palais Lobkowitz, the Festsaal of the Akademie der Wissenschaften, and the Niederösterreichischer Landhaussaal. For Gottlieb Wallisch this was a unique experience, a veritable immersion in the sound world of Beethoven’s times: “The combination of the fortepiano sound with the original-sound orchestra results in a fascinating opportunity to shed new tonal light on Beethoven’s music and to understand it in new ways. The sound of this fortepiano from the period around 1820 captivates the listener with its special color in the various registers and its elegant purity while already discreetly looking into the future with its somewhat greater volume. The main characteristic in performance with the orchestra is the appealing transparency of all the voices, especially in the dialogue between the piano and the woodwind instruments.” Beethoven’s transcription of his Violin Concerto op. 61 for piano and orchestra – in music history the rare case of a transfer of a work from a stringed instrument to a keyboard instrument – gains authenticity and musical logic through performance on the fortepiano. His Rondo WoO is heard in a first-time recording; it originally formed the concluding movement of his Piano Concerto No. 2.

Nikolai Tcherepnin (not to be confused with his son Alexander!) represents a generation of composers who not only combined two diametrically opposed epochs – the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – but also followed the path of stylistic change leading from late romanticism to impressionism and from impressionism to modernism. His name stands not only for the culture of his native Russia but also in equal measure for Western European art – and especially that of France. In the symphonic prelude Princesse lointaine, a short early work, Tcherepnin develops his compositional aesthetic, and we already detect what later would be a dominant element in his mature works: an interest in legends and sagas. The ballet music for Narcissus and Echo forms the focus of this album. Tcherepnin realized the underlying ideas of the designer Léon Bakst and the choreographer Michel Fokine in his score and did so not merely in an illustrative way but on the strength of his own expressive means. The colorful gradations that Bakst discovered as an optical solution, sometimes the contrast between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles, and the contrast between the bright attire of the Booetians and the dark, muted color of the nymph Echo, who laments her unrequited love, are reflected in the changing orchestral coloration of the music. Tcherepnin’s music, in part pervaded by a tenor’s vocalises and a vocal ensemble, becomes a brilliant, highly pictorial subject. This is a stylized antiquity with an exquisiteness, beauty, and refinement integrated into a cult, and these characteristics situate the Narcissus score – one of the interesting aesthetic artistic monuments of the early twentieth century – in the vicinity of impressionism and modernism.

As the court music director in Zerbst, Johann Friedrich Fasch had to deal directly with current religious trends and was obliged to occupy himself with Pietism. After all, from the beginning of his tenure there his duties had included the composition of the church music for every court religious service and for all the church feast days. Fasch had a special mission in mind when he penned his cantatas: he was very much interested in having hislisteners not remain indifferent to the texts that were sung. And so he employed all sorts of compositional tricks to capture their attention and to emphasize words of special importance to him. This procedure is impressively revealed already at the beginning of the cantata »Ich danke dem Herrn vom ganzen Herzen.« After a short instrumental introduction the opening Biblical text is presented not as usual by the choir but initially by the solo soprano. Then in the Missa in G major almost all the facets of Fasch’s musical talent are shown; from arias with obbligato solo instruments to grandly dimensioned chorale fugues placing the greatest demands both on the singers and the instrumentalists, it was composed in its entirety for the entertainment and edification of his noble employer and to the glory of God. One of Fasch’s overture suites of extraordinary quality rounds off this album. In his autobiography he acknowledged : "On this occasion I cannot avoid publicly acknowledging that I then learned mostly everything from the beautiful work of my most revered and beloved friend, Mr. Music Director Telemann, by constantly taking the same as a model for me, especially in the overtures".

Our first collaborative venture with the Constanze Quartet from Salzburg also marks the production of the first complete recording of the string quartets of Felix Draeseke – a German composer, a representative of the new German school, and a contemporary of Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Johannes Brahms. Draeseke’s string quartets are unique in style. In them we often encounter influence from Wagner, even if not in the form of an imitation of Wagnerian compositional style but as a creative continuation of the legacy of Classical composers such as they were transmitted to Draeseke through Wagner. The idea of a “melodic thread” holding the music together while serving as a unifying element is in evidence everywhere in these works. Both quartets impressively demonstrate the words of the Draeseke expert Christoph Schlüren: “Draeseke is primarily lyrical in nature but at the same time has his appealing harshness and explores the dark, introverted expressive worlds with a unique imagination. The far-reaching melos is tailored for contrapuntal suitability, and for German circumstances the rhythm is particularly zestful and highly varied. Stylistically, relations quite obviously exist not only between Draeseke and Beethoven but also between Draeseke and Mendelssohn inasmuch as Draeseke’s highly colorful harmonic language, in part pervaded by surprising modulations, is an individual continuation and development of the New German “progressive” stance proceeding from Wagner and Liszt. Draeseke’s outstanding stature as a string quartet composer rests above all on his entirely original architectonic mastery in a genre in which Beethoven and Schubert created unsurpassable music, but where Draeseke, together with Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and the late Dvorák, proceeding from the experiences of Schumann and Mendelssohn, produced decidedly new music.”