You can’t fault Howard Shelley and his orchestra or suggest that they are not trying. In fact, they play well. The problem lies with the music. Spohr’s symphonies are dull, stiff, and though popular in their day, hardly worth reviving now. What made them special–the daring use of chromatic harmony–no longer impresses in light of later and better achievements (remember Wagner?), and their melodic charms don’t last. The Eighth Symphony has two good tunes: one at the start of the slow movement, which peters out into blandness, and one in the finale. The rest is anodyne, the scoring pretty but overly blended. Perhaps it would sound more interesting on period instruments.
Spohr was nothing if not self-critical, and he suppressed his Tenth Symphony, with good reason: it’s so forgettable as to vanish from the memory while it’s actually in progress. Listening to it is like trying to follow a recipe in which each ingredient disappears just as you move on to the next one in the list. Then you have to go back and make the dish. Bon appétit! The overture, an early work, is also forgettably post-Mozartian. Remember, this was a guy who played in the premiere of Beethoven’s Seventh–but then, he thought Beethoven’s music was rough, crude, and tasteless, though he championed it (selectively) all his life. It’s your call.
