I enjoyed this survey of Weber's life and music, even though it would have been good to hear more of the unfamiliar pieces (e.g. solo piano works apart from the dreaded Invitation to the Dance). Weber has gone out of fashion, perhaps has long been out of fashion. In an age venerating the long and/or complex symphony, a contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert who generally avoided the genre (apart from a couple of short and uncomplicated efforts written when he was 20, one with an almost comically brief finale), is perhaps unsurprisingly considered something of a lightweight. We now hear few of his works for solo piano or piano and orchestra, even though some are technically very challenging (an example was the Konzertstuck which was broadcast during the week), not least because of Weber's very large hands. The operas are rarely staged, at least in Britain, because they are not thought to be good box-office and because of the absurdity of some of the libretti - though most opera plots are pretty absurd anyway. All we tend to hear these days, for the most part, are the clarinet works and the overtures.
Yet Weber's reputation was not always so low. Beethoven, whom Weber met, was impressed as many contemporaries were by Der Freischütz and said that Weber must write nothing but operas. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz and Liszt all admired Weber's music, as did later Mahler, who put on a cycle of Weber operas in Leipzig for the centenary of his birth and made a completion of Die Drei Pintos, and Stravinsky, whose Capriccio reflects the influence of Weber's Konzertstuck. And Wagner revered him as being effectively the founder of German opera, and arranged for him to be reburied in Dresden. That is a fair roll-call of composers who valued Weber's music highly. And there were critics too - particularly Donald Tovey, who wrote eloquently about the brilliance of the overtures, and prepared a new revised performing edition of Euryanthe with the collaboration of Rolf Lauckner.
I think it is a great shame that Weber is so undervalued today. With his orchestral writing particularly in the late operas he introduced a new range of colours and harmonies to the music which had a profound influence on later romantic composers. His writing for wind instruments, notably in the solo clarinet, bassoon and horn works, is eloquent and he had a great melodic gift. His masterpieces are his late operas, and though they are flawed in the case of Euryanthe(one of the first through-composed operas) and Oberon, the wonderful music they contain mean they deserve to be back in the operatic repertoire in this country.
P.S. And the old canard about Weber saying of the last movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony that LvB was "ripe for the madhouse" was almost certainly an invention of the hostile Schindler (Schindler even admitted that he may have got it wrong when he was challenged about it).
Yet Weber's reputation was not always so low. Beethoven, whom Weber met, was impressed as many contemporaries were by Der Freischütz and said that Weber must write nothing but operas. Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz and Liszt all admired Weber's music, as did later Mahler, who put on a cycle of Weber operas in Leipzig for the centenary of his birth and made a completion of Die Drei Pintos, and Stravinsky, whose Capriccio reflects the influence of Weber's Konzertstuck. And Wagner revered him as being effectively the founder of German opera, and arranged for him to be reburied in Dresden. That is a fair roll-call of composers who valued Weber's music highly. And there were critics too - particularly Donald Tovey, who wrote eloquently about the brilliance of the overtures, and prepared a new revised performing edition of Euryanthe with the collaboration of Rolf Lauckner.
I think it is a great shame that Weber is so undervalued today. With his orchestral writing particularly in the late operas he introduced a new range of colours and harmonies to the music which had a profound influence on later romantic composers. His writing for wind instruments, notably in the solo clarinet, bassoon and horn works, is eloquent and he had a great melodic gift. His masterpieces are his late operas, and though they are flawed in the case of Euryanthe(one of the first through-composed operas) and Oberon, the wonderful music they contain mean they deserve to be back in the operatic repertoire in this country.
P.S. And the old canard about Weber saying of the last movement of Beethoven's 7th symphony that LvB was "ripe for the madhouse" was almost certainly an invention of the hostile Schindler (Schindler even admitted that he may have got it wrong when he was challenged about it).
record, including Durch die Wälder, durch die Auen from Der Freischütz (there's a YouTube video, but I have to admit, I probably prefer Jonas Kaufmann's Max now).
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