Franz Schrecker -- Kammersymphonie -Chamber Symphony

https://youtu.be/UYaxVlJeGeA?si=P7yMk9-0WdEYxtkq

I'd never heard of Franz Schrecker, let alone this 1916 work, until this evening when I was listening to Performance Today on KMFA.

The opening is quite magical, and let's you into a musical realm that reminded me at times of a miniature Mahler. I've already played it once on YouTube this evening and will be listening again soon

Schrecker's father was a Jew, while his mother was Roman Catholic. Antisemites did their best to push him out of musical life; before the rise of the Nazis and his death in 1934, Schrecker had been the most performed living composer in Germany after Richard Strauss. Yet even after the fall of the the Third Reich, his works remained in obscurity for decades because, I would guess, his late romantic style was difficult to fit into a narrow and doctrinaire modernist account of 20th century music history.

I wonder who currently celebrated in the arts and literature will be largely forgotten fifty years from now.

##ClassicalMusic #FranzSchrecker
#ChamberSymphony #RomanticMusic