Josef Foerster was by all accounts a contented soul, and this shows in his music, which is generally open and optimistic in character. Certainly the Festive Overture and the tone poem Meine Jugend fall into this category: he sounds a bit like Richard Strauss without the danger or decadence. Symphony No. 4, subtitled “Easter Eve”, strikes a deeper note, and it’s a lovely work. There is no competition for the two shorter pieces, which are well played and conducted and make a very good impression. Foerster lived to the ripe old age of 91, and he wrote a ton of music, so who knows what other gems are out there waiting to be discovered.
In the symphony (Foerster’s best-known piece along with the tone poem Cyrano de Bergerac) conductor Lance Friedel is about six minutes slower (out of 40-plus) than Smetácek on Supraphon, and some listeners will prefer the latter’s livelier tempos. (There’s also an historical recording under Kubelik that really isn’t competitive on account of very dated sonics.) Questions of tempo aside, if you didn’t know the Smetácek you’d surely not care at all, because Friedel has the measure of the piece and projects its gentle loveliness just as effectively. Also, the vivid engineering gives the organ-reinforced conclusion plenty of the necessary gravitas, and at the Naxos price you can hardly go wrong. This is well-made, attractive music that fans of late-Romanticism should certainly hear.
