(+++) ILLUMINATING LESSER LIGHTS

Heinrich Marschner: Overtures and Stage Music, Volume 3. Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Dario Salvi. Naxos. $19.99. 

Carl Teike: Marches, Volume 2. The Royal Swedish Navy Band conducted by Alexander Hanson. Naxos. $19.99. 

     The byways of music history are packed – it would be cruel to say “littered” – with composers and compositions that are admirable in many ways, that may even have enjoyed considerable success for a time or under specific circumstances, but that are considerably less than compelling when rediscovered. That does not make the rediscovery itself any less worthy – there are some little-known musical jewels out there, after all, and even semi-precious gems can glow with beauty of their own. So it is admirable when conductors and producers go beyond the obvious from time to time and seek out material whose composers may now be little-known, whose reputation may be small or time-bound, but whose overall effect can be more than pleasant – especially for listeners seeking a divergence from the works of music’s acknowledged masters. Thus, Naxos is providing a genuine if somewhat limited-interest service in its ongoing recorded explorations of the music of Heinrich August Marschner (1795-1861) and Carl Teike (1864-1922). 

     Marschner is more significant for his place in music history than for his actual music. He was the most important German opera composer between Weber and Wagner, and in fact Wagner’s first opera, Die Feen, is essentially his “take” on the Marschner operatic world (as his second, Das Liebesverbot, is more-or-less a Wagnerian encapsulation of Rossini, a circumstance that was not as weird at the time as it appears to be retrospectively). Wagner was influenced to a considerable degree by Marschner’s use of melodrama centered on powerful antiheroic central characters, his expanded use of the lower range of the orchestra, and his development of supernatural protagonists with mortal failings. And on their own, two Marschner operas – Der Vampyr and Hans Heiling – remain impressive. But the conductor who is largely responsible for the ongoing Naxos releases of Marschner’s music, Dario Salvi, focuses primarily on the composer’s many less-known (and generally less successful) stage works, offering orchestral excerpts thrown more or less willy-nilly together. The result is a scattershot presentation of Marschner’s music that never really shows his skill at evoking atmospheric drama: there are plenty of pleasantries but no great sense of organizational skill in presenting them. Nevertheless, there is a lot to enjoy in Salvi’s Marschner recordings, the third of which includes the overture to a work whose very form is long since obsolete: a so-called “vaudeville,” Der Verlobung von der Trommel, which is a mashup of music by three other composers (Adolphe Adam, Karl August Krebs, and Adolf Müller) – with the overture itself being Marschner’s adaptation of Adam’s overture to Le Roi d’Yvetot, and the original stage production as a whole being designed to cash in on the popularity of Donizetti’s La Fille du regiment. The complexities of its provenance notwithstanding, the music itself is an effective curtain-raiser whose brightly upbeat conclusion nicely sets the scene for the now-forgotten entertainment it was designed to introduce. The remaining works offered by Salvi and the Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra are from Marschner operas of various times and types. From Das Schloss am Aetna, a three-act “grand romantic opera” premièred in 1836, there is an extended and effectively orchestrated overture plus five brief bits of disconnected musical excerpts that are only intermittently expressive when out of context, as they are here. Lukretia, a two-act work first heard in 1827, is here represented by an entr’acte and a suitably grand march. From Der Bäbu, a two-act comic opera first presented in 1838, there are three short pieces consisting primarily of cleverly orchestrated music representing the antics of a group of dwarfs. And from Marschner’s final opera, Sangeskönig Hiarne, a four-act work not produced until 1863, two years after the composer’s death, Salvi offers the overture, which effectively mixes mystery with solemnity and shows the composer’s skill at brass writing, plus three excerpts – also with important material for the brass section – that delineate specific scenes in the first, second and final act. Marschner was above all a composer for the stage, although he did write effectively in other forms, notably that of the piano trio. Hearing highlights from his operas and other stage works is considerably more meaningful in context than in the rather arbitrary presentation of Salvi’s series. Still, any chance to explore a bit of Marschner, and find out through direct experience of his music why he was for a time quite influential, is welcome.

     Teike, unlike Marschner, was not particularly influential on anyone, and the second release in a planned three-volume series of his marches confirms that these pieces do not really bear comparison with works by Sousa, the Strauss family, or Tchaikovsky. Yet Teike’s marches, structurally well-made and well-orchestrated for military band, are of considerable interest to listeners intrigued by the march form in the 19^th century – a time when German marches were strictly separated into concert, street and explicitly military types (those last being “parade marches” and not necessarily aggressive). Teike’s works are self-limited to the street and parade ground: they are generally foursquare pieces, scored with care and skill (Teike himself served in a military band) but without any particular inclination for out-of-the-ordinary use of instruments or for any expansion of the traditional complement of military ensembles. What Teike’s marches require to overcome their self-imposed limitations is strong, sensitive and elegant playing, and that is exactly what they receive from the Royal Swedish Navy Band conducted  by Alexander Hanson – resulting in a whole disc that is greater than the sum of its parts. Of the 18 works on this CD, fully half have been arranged, or at least tweaked, by hands other than the composer’s; but in all cases the music come across to equally good effect, indicating that the arrangers (Hans Ahrens for five marches, Anders Karlsson for two, and Erich Gutzeit for two) were sensitive to Teike’s writing and understood as well the exigencies of military-band performance. Little is known of the background of most of Teike’s marches or even of the reasons for their titles, which are often patriotic (Für Thron und Reich), sometimes evocative (Die Welt in Waffen), occasionally expressive (Treue um Treue), at times a bit puzzling (Frisch auf, one of the best here, with an unexpectedly warm introductory section), and frequently geographical (Hoch Braunschweig and Heil Potsdam). In the absence of “backstories” for the works (details of Teike’s life are themselves scarce), the music must stand on its own, and it certainly does – at attention. And if there is nothing in this Teike series that is likely to supplant marches that are already well-known and popular for both concert and military purposes, there is also nothing here to diminish Teike’s rediscovered reputation as a march composer of considerable ability within a comparatively straitened set of circumstances. All these pieces are forceful and forthright, not particularly innovative but undeniably effective in putting across a specific set of martial feelings through the skillful deployment of the forces of the military band.