Felix Weingartner’s symphonies go through all the motions: the allegros try to be purposefully developmental, the adagios strive for elevated tone. The finale of the present symphony features fugal writing guaranteed to impress by its seriousness and “architectural” qualities. But it all sounds derivative (of Brahms, Bruckner, even at times of Mahler), and more to the point, unmotivated. The tunes are “of their period” rather than “of Weingartner”, and the first movement of the Fifth lacks contrast and drama.
By the same token, you have to respect the skill that goes into the music’s fabrication. Whether you’ll enjoy it or not is another matter. It may be that the performance offers less variety of pacing and dynamics than would be the case if the participants knew the music really well, but their efforts are beyond reproach given the job at hand, and there’s little point in complaining about the air when there’s nothing else to breathe.
The overture From Serious Times is a wonderful puzzle of a piece. A sort of fantasia on the English, French, Russian, and Austrian national anthems (the French come off the worst), it immediately brings to mind Beethoven’s Wellington’s Victory and Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. The date of composition, 1915, makes Weingartner’s intentions somewhat hard to fathom, but that doesn’t lessen the music’s appeal as a genuine curiosity that would have audiences today really sitting up and taking notice. The high quality of the performance only reinforces the conviction that the problems with the symphony lie with the composer rather than with the players. Excellent SACD multi-channel sound adds to the disc’s appeal. You really want to like Weingartner. His heart is in the right place and he tries very hard. Perhaps that’s the problem.
