From Romantic To Ironic

With the passage of time, it becomes inevitable that the monthly BBC Music mag cover disks will produce more duplications in repertoire in my collection and that is the case here with this offering from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ilan Volkov. The centre piece of the disk is Brahms Symphony No 1 and a good solid performance it is too. There are two brief makeweights on the disk of music that I do not otherwise have. It begins with Schumann's Faust Overture to his oratorio like work scenes From Goethe's Faust, which concentrated on the final part of Faust's redemption. The overture was in fact written after the main work and often forms a short concert piece with its' depiction of intense inner struggle. The final work on the disk is Kleine Sinfonie by Hanns Eisler. Eisler was a lifelong Marxist and being born Jewish at the turn of the 20th century in Leipzig, those factors condemned him to a wandering life lived variously in the USSR and the USA. He was a one time pupil of Schoenberg and also involved with Brecht and wrote works ranging from strict 12-note method compositions to film scores. Expelled from the USA by McCarthyism, he settled in East Germany where he became an important figure in musical life in that neglected era. The Kleine Sinfonie is short but embraces 12 note methodology in a parodic style with Shostakovichian irony and cartoonish elements.