Hermann Bischoff - Symphony No. 2 in D Minor (1912)
Conducted by Werner Andreas Albert with the Rheinland-Pfalz State Philharmonic Orchestra.
I. Allegro - 00:00
II. Intermezzo - Vivace - 12:17
III. Adagio - 17:16
IV. Allegro Molto - 33:03
Hermann Bischoff was a German composer of classical music. After leaving Leipzig to continue his first studies of music, he met Richard Strauss and fell in with his circle. Bischoff's two symphonies have been recorded on the record label Classic Produktion Osnabrück, along with a 1926 Introduction und Rondo. His first symphony, dedicated Herrn Dr. Richard Strauss, was performed in Essen in the same festival in 1906 that saw the premiere of Mahler's Sixth Symphony.
"The Second Symphony is in the tradition of nineteenth century pastoral pleasure. The composer is not as grand as his friend Hausegger -- to whom he dedicated the Second Symphony -- but he does write very pleasingly. True, there is little of tragic urgency. You might even say that the music gives off a certain smiling complacency. It's broadly speaking Brahmsian -- yet, not. The idiom is redolent of Bruckner 4; that rustic regality punctuated with rhetorical brass flourishes. It is vaguely in the confluence of Dvořák 7, Schumann's Rhenish, Brahms 2 and Mahler 4. Gusts of wind shake the heights of the forest but not the soul which stays secure and confident, rooted deeply in the South German temperament. This is a work without sourness or disillusion. Instead it speaks of the idealistic, the benign and the Palladian."
