Best known outside Denmark for his flute and piano works, Friedrich Kuhlau was also important in his day as a composer of music for the stage, both Singspiel-type operas and incidental music. His most famous work is the music for the popular drama The Elf's Hill, while the magic opera Lulu, based on the same source as Mozart's Zauberflöte, still holds the stage in his adopted homeland. This new disc assembles all the overtures from his dramatic works, several here receiving their first recordings. And though Kuhlau's magpie tendencies can be a little disconcerting (echoes of Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini, Paer, Weber and Rossini are liable to crop up at any point), all the music here is fluently crafted and expertly, often brilliantly, orchestrated.
Best known outside Denmark for his flute and piano works, Friedrich Kuhlau was also important in his day as a composer of music for the stage, both Singspiel-type operas and incidental music. His most famous work is the music for the popular drama The Elf's Hill, while the magic opera Lulu, based on the same source as Mozart's Zauberflöte, still holds the stage in his adopted homeland. This new disc assembles all the overtures from his dramatic works, several here receiving their first recordings. And though Kuhlau's magpie tendencies can be a little disconcerting (echoes of Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini, Paer, Weber and Rossini are liable to crop up at any point), all the music here is fluently crafted and expertly, often brilliantly, orchestrated.
Most memorable is the overture to Lulu, with its vivid, sharply contrasted themes (each associated, et la Weber, with a different character in the opera) and its evocative scoring. The earliest overture, The Robber's Castle, is a bustling, bright-eyed piece full of perky woodwind repartee (shades here of Figaro); Hugo and Adelheid begins with a nod to Beethoven's Fidelio overture and continues with a shameless crib from Prometheus; and the jaunty William Shakespeare overture (whose opera centres on a fictional episode from the playwright's youth) irresistibly suggests Rossini, especially in its cheeky second theme. There is a certain period charm in the pot-pourri overture to The Elf's Hill, little more than a loose succession of folk-tunes from the play itself. El/so (which borrows from Paer) and The Magic Harp, both prefaced by imposing slow introductions, are altogether grander in scope, though here, as at times elsewhere, Kuhlau's ambitions can outreach his staying power.
Still, if much of the music on this disc is agreeable rather than compellingly individual, it offers undemanding enjoyment to anyone curious about the forgotten byways of early romanticism. The Danish orchestra under Michael Schonwandt play with skill and verve, and Chandos's recording is atmospheric and full-bodied. --Grmophone
Most memorable is the overture to Lulu, with its vivid, sharply contrasted themes (each associated, et la Weber, with a different character in the opera) and its evocative scoring. The earliest overture, The Robber's Castle, is a bustling, bright-eyed piece full of perky woodwind repartee (shades here of Figaro); Hugo and Adelheid begins with a nod to Beethoven's Fidelio overture and continues with a shameless crib from Prometheus; and the jaunty William Shakespeare overture (whose opera centres on a fictional episode from the playwright's youth) irresistibly suggests Rossini, especially in its cheeky second theme. There is a certain period charm in the pot-pourri overture to The Elf's Hill, little more than a loose succession of folk-tunes from the play itself. El/so (which borrows from Paer) and The Magic Harp, both prefaced by imposing slow introductions, are altogether grander in scope, though here, as at times elsewhere, Kuhlau's ambitions can outreach his staying power.
Still, if much of the music on this disc is agreeable rather than compellingly individual, it offers undemanding enjoyment to anyone curious about the forgotten byways of early romanticism. The Danish orchestra under Michael Schonwandt play with skill and verve, and Chandos's recording is atmospheric and full-bodied. --Grmophone
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