Felix Draeseke’s music continues to make a mixed impression. Certainly Jörg-Peter Weigle’s vigorous and confident performance of the derivative First Symphony makes a better impression than did the premiere recording on MDG, but it’s still not a great work. Perhaps the best movement is the Scherzo, which is full of humor and ear-catching instrumental detail, but it still goes on for too long and the outer movements lack memorability of any sort. The overture to Gudrun, similarly recorded previously by MDG (and very well, too) still strikes me as among the dullest 11 minutes of music yet conceived by the human mind.
However, the Fourth Symphony, subtitled Sinfonia Comica, is just that: a delightful romp with a hilarious second movement titled “War of the Flies”, with the cymbals doing duty as fly-swatters. Understandably overshadowed in its day by Draeseke’s very popular Sinfonia Tragica–which isn’t very, but still is more the sort of heavy-duty music German composers were supposed to write–this concise, 20-minute symphony (very well played and recorded, like everything else on the disc) shows what Draeseke might have accomplished had he been able to stop taking himself so seriously a few decades before. The news isn’t all bad: the Second Symphony, also released in this series, turns out to be a fine work as well, and it would be very interesting to hear some of the unaccompanied choral works, which those in the know claim represent his masterpieces. If you are collecting Draeseke, you won’t need any further encouragement from me. This is a very well-made release of music that won’t appeal to all tastes. Nothing wrong with that!
