In the early 1870s Johan Svendsen and his American wife Sally Levett got to be friends with Dick and Cosima Wagner. According to Simax’s booklet notes, Sally was a “Mosaic Jew” (I must have missed something at my Bar Mitzvah–I didn’t know there was any other kind). With the connivance of her husband, and in between marathon evenings of bridge, charades, and Monopoly, Dick and Cosima worked her over until she finally agreed to convert to Christianity. Apparently they locked the poor woman in the basement with a brass band that played the Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhäuser until she caved in under the bombastic pressure (Sally was by all accounts a championship Monopoly player, and the Wagners, sore losers at best, couldn’t bear the thought of being beaten by a Jew, “Mosaic” or otherwise). Anyway, Sally’s baptism was such a touching event that her husband felt compelled to write his tone poem Zorahayda, which purportedly deals with the subject of a Moorish princess who similarly adopts the Christian faith.
Now there are few things in music duller than 19th-century bourgeois sentimental religiosity, and this piece is no exception. It’s a snooze–but then, so is Sigurd Slembe, a story of unbridled violence that finds little if any analog in Svendsen’s resolutely conservative and unadventurous music. It’s a shame, really, because the performances sound marvelous, and as usual with this label they are stunningly recorded.
Happily, the much longer couplings by Johan Selmer more than make up for the Svendsen disappointments. Unlike his compatriot, Selmer (1844-1910) was a progressive, a big fan of Berlioz, and you can hear it in his absolutely nutty Carnival at Flanders, a work that gives new meaning to the phrase “Bang on a Can”. The tone poem Prometheus also is full of colorful sounds and characterful passages, even if the relationship of the music to the very involved storyline seems a mite tenuous at times. Best just to listen to it in the abstract, and enjoy hearing the composer’s imagination romp about the orchestra with admirable freedom and skill. For these two pieces alone, fans of rare Romantic repertoire will find this disc well worth the investment, and as noted already, the performances and sonics are well-nigh unbeatable.
