Schmidt's Second

On the topic of neglected symphonies, Gavin Plumley, in the Guardian, gives a nuanced portrait of Franz Schmidt, in advance of a Proms performance of his Second Symphony, and Bob Shingleton adds another plea in favor of "Forgotten Music." I've loved the Schmidt Second since hearing the astounding live recording by Neeme Järvi and the Chicago Symphony, released by Chandos in 1992. This is one of those symphonies, like the Tubin Fifth, in which you essentially wait for one stupendous moment; Schmidt's coda is obviously inspired by the ending of Bruckner's Fifth, but déjà vu is rarely more glorious. What's wonderful in the Järvi recording is the sense of the great Chicago players discovering and exulting in an unfamiliar score: it's a wordless argument for diversifying the repertory. I wrote about Schmidt, Zemlinsky, and Schreker for the New York Times in 1993; I remain proud of having described one passage in Schreker's Der ferne Klang as a "midnight dance of the orchestration manual." I had recently read Adorno's marvelous essays on Zemlinsky and Schreker in Quasi una Fantasia. Unsurprisingly, Adorno seems to have had no time for Schmidt.