MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


To gain a 10% discount, use the link below & the code MusicWeb10

Woldemar BARGIEL (1828-1897)
Symphony in C, Op. 30 (1880) [31:36]
Overture to Medea for large orchestra, inspired by Euripides’ tragedy, Op. 22 (c.1861) [10.38]
Intermezzo for Orchestra Op.46 (1880) [7.02]
Overture to a Tragedy for large orchestra, inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Op. 18 (1859) [14.54]
Orquesta Sinfonica de San Luis Potosi/José Miramontes Zapata
rec. live, Teatro de la Paz, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, 2014
STERLING CDS1105-2 [64.14]

Woldemar Bargiel, composer, director and pedagogue as the booklet has it, wrote a small amount of music but taught extensively in Berlin. Family ties with the Schumann family and studies with Moscheles and Gade equipped him well for a compositional career and it’s the major symphonic and orchestral works to which Sterling has turned in this release.

Composed in 1880 the Symphony in C is strongly stamped with Beethovenian influence, harmonically, rhythmically, as well as thematically. It possesses a striving intensity and a purposeful sense of organization and if, from time to time, it seems somewhat repetitious, moments such as the elegiac outer panels of the slow movement offer compensation. This movement seems to pay homage to Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, drawing on a noble peroration. There’s a heavy-stomping, somewhat Viennese scherzo and a classical sonata form finale, that might evoke Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony, its triumphant motto theme full of striding brio.

Refined touches, such as layered brass writing, inform the orchestration of Overture to Medea: portent and subtle drama couched in classical form. Hints, too, of Mendelssohn, once more, and of the Beethoven of Egmont. A more genial and relaxed affair is the 1880 Intermezzo with its elegant burnish. Finally, there is the Overture to a Tragedy for large orchestra, inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Op. 18, the earliest of the quartet of works, composed in 1859. Romantic but disciplined, Mendelssohnian but slightly diffuse, its urgency is balanced by an emotional even-keel that ensures balance but also that the music never strays much beyond allotted bounds. This is expertly done but somewhat constrained when it comes to the emotive complexity of the source material.

The supporting documentation is perfectly adequate, indeed good. The recording is similarly attractive and, despite one or two moments of imprecision, the orchestra plays with commitment and stylistic assurance, directed by the expert José Miramontes Zapata.

Jonathan Woolf

Previous reviews: Rob Barnett ~ Michael Wilkinson

 



Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing