Steinberg Orchestral Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Maximilian Steinberg
Label: DG
Magazine Review Date: 11/1999
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 61
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: 457 607-2GH
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Symphony No. 1 |
Maximilian Steinberg, Composer
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Maximilian Steinberg, Composer Neeme Järvi, Conductor |
Prélude symphonique |
Maximilian Steinberg, Composer
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Maximilian Steinberg, Composer Neeme Järvi, Conductor |
Fantaisie dramatique |
Maximilian Steinberg, Composer
Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra Maximilian Steinberg, Composer Neeme Järvi, Conductor |
Author:
Maximilian Oseyevich Steinberg (1883-1946) is most familiar these days as a footnote to other careers. He was a near-contemporary of Igor Stravinsky and fellow-student in Rimsky-Korsakov’s composition classes, who enjoyed his teacher’s favour to the extent of getting to marry his daughter, landing himself a professorship at the age of 25, and possibly fuelling Stravinsky’s determination to break away from the Rimsky-Korsakov line. Some 15 years on, Steinberg was the pedagogue who taught Shostakovich and failed to confine his unruly pupil to the straight and narrow.
Steinberg himself kept faith with his father-in-law’s precepts, even in later works such as his Fourth Symphony, quaintly dedicated to the completion of the Turkmenistan-Siberia railway. His First Symphony, a student piece, is stylistically even more conformist, showing just why Rimsky-Korsakov thought so highly of him. It follows the tried and tested recipe of symphonic stew a la Schumann. All the ingredients are mixed in the right proportions, little bits of Russian spice are tossed in here and there, and the whole is served in a palatable instrumental dressing, much as Rimsky himself had done in his Third Symphony and Glazunov in all eight of his. All is reassuringly familiar and well-behaved, down to the token fugato in the finale (how Rachmaninov hated that discpline, yet what vastly greater power he drew from it in his First Symphony). A review of the first performance in March 1908 pronounced it ‘an extremely immature composition in which one detects above all the strong influence of Glazunov’s music’; only the intensifier seems misplaced.
The Symphonic Prelude and the Dramatic Fantasia are darker and more adventurous, as befits a musical commemoration of Rimsky-Korsakov’s and a piece inspired by passages from Ibsen’s Brand, respectively.
It’s a luxury to have these near-forgotten works so beautifully played and recorded. Jarvi ensures that the symphony bounds along with unflagging verve, and the moods of the two shorter pieces are idiomatically captured. For all its rather predictable progress Steinberg’s music is unfailingly attractive and well-crafted. So if this is the first in a projected cycle of his symphonies I for one will be delighted.
'
Steinberg himself kept faith with his father-in-law’s precepts, even in later works such as his Fourth Symphony, quaintly dedicated to the completion of the Turkmenistan-Siberia railway. His First Symphony, a student piece, is stylistically even more conformist, showing just why Rimsky-Korsakov thought so highly of him. It follows the tried and tested recipe of symphonic stew a la Schumann. All the ingredients are mixed in the right proportions, little bits of Russian spice are tossed in here and there, and the whole is served in a palatable instrumental dressing, much as Rimsky himself had done in his Third Symphony and Glazunov in all eight of his. All is reassuringly familiar and well-behaved, down to the token fugato in the finale (how Rachmaninov hated that discpline, yet what vastly greater power he drew from it in his First Symphony). A review of the first performance in March 1908 pronounced it ‘an extremely immature composition in which one detects above all the strong influence of Glazunov’s music’; only the intensifier seems misplaced.
The Symphonic Prelude and the Dramatic Fantasia are darker and more adventurous, as befits a musical commemoration of Rimsky-Korsakov’s and a piece inspired by passages from Ibsen’s Brand, respectively.
It’s a luxury to have these near-forgotten works so beautifully played and recorded. Jarvi ensures that the symphony bounds along with unflagging verve, and the moods of the two shorter pieces are idiomatically captured. For all its rather predictable progress Steinberg’s music is unfailingly attractive and well-crafted. So if this is the first in a projected cycle of his symphonies I for one will be delighted.
'
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