Hermann Bischoff was the son
of a successful steel manufacturer in Leipzig, Germany, at a
time when German music reigned supreme throughout Europe. The
ghosts of Beethoven and Schumann were still haunting the landscape.
Wagner was topping the opera charts. Even Mahler was just starting
to climb out of the shadows cast by Brahms and Bruch, and the
French, particularly Saint-Saëns, Chausson, Debussy and Chabrier,
were just figuring out how to add more colors to the romantic
palette of European music. The composer, however, who benefited
the most from this heady mix was the young Richard Strauss.
What has Richard Strauss to do
with Hermann Bischoff, you ask? Well, it turns out that when
the young Bischoff – only four years Strauss’s junior – left
Leipzig to continue his studies in music, he traveled to Munich
in the 1880s and fell under the influence of Richard Strauss.
He was drawn to the crowd who were consciously steering away
from Wagner and the grand operatic gesture, with its noisy sturm
und drang. It was a group of young composers who were leaning
more toward the expanded lyric and the extended melodic line
. . . which is pretty much what we have in Bischoff’s First
Symphony.
Conductor Werner Andreas Albert
and the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz inject considerable
enthusiasm into this music, but when all is said and done, it’ll
still remind you of Strauss. You’ll hear a tad of Till Eulenspiegel,
a trace of Don Juan and perhaps flourish or two that
could have come right out of Don Quixote. This isn’t
to say that the music is derivative. Bischoff learned quite
a lot from Strauss, but it’s clear from this work that the symphony
format is unwieldy for him. Strauss succeeds in his tone poems
because of the narrow thematic focus the form demands. This
would be similar to the ode in poetry. Odes are meditations
on a single subject with no formal structure or limits in length.
They merely have to stick to a single theme. Strauss’s legacy
lies in his mastery of this form, just as John Keats’ legacy
resides in his odes. Bischoff clearly can create charming melodies
and he did learn something from Strauss about counterpoint,
but the symphony format seems an awkward fit.
This doesn’t mean, however, that
it’s not fun to listen to. It is that. But in the end, this
work’s chief appeal is going to be for those listeners who are
following the evolution of 19th century German music.
Bischoff is still worth a listen.
Paul
Cook
Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/Werner Andreas Albert
