John Street

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Louis Spohr – leftie with many strings to his bow

We like to celebrate anniversaries and the BBC has been busy recently with Purcell, Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Almost overlooked was the fourth great Czech, Martinu, who died in 1959. Then belatedly, Andrew Burton had 35 constructive minutes on Radio 3’s Record Review last December, for the sesquicentennial (lovely word) of Louis Spohr who died in October 1859.

I have admired the cool melodic music of this Brunswicker ever since I was given his four double-quartets by the great Ted Perry of Hyperion after an interview, 20 years ago. And he belongs in Tribune. A man of high and generous character, Louis Spohr was one of us, a leftie, getting more so as he grew older. You cannot call a man complacent who, at 64 and Kappelmeister to a German Prince, in 1848 helps students to build barricades. Even his name is a political statement. Christened “Ludwig”, he preferred “Louis” – associated with dangerous, radical France.  Joe Haines would have worried about him.

Yet the fall in his standing until recently was due to his musical conservatism. As this conservatism amounted to an undying love

of Mozart, I shouldn’t worry about it. Interestingly though, while the explorations of Beethoven troubled him, Spohr would champion the young Wagner, conducting the premiere of Tannhäuser. A bad critical habit today is the cult of innovation. “Yes, I enjoyed that, but isn’t it derivative?” So much frankly unenjoyable music is proclaimed “significant and relevant” by sterile dominies for whom impact is all, pleasure sinful.

It’s a puritan creed with a streak of masochism. Spohr, like JF Fasch, Franz Danzi and, in our own day, George Lloyd and Berthold Goldschmidt, has suffered for writing good music of a school, music which kicks no doors down. He was, ironically, the complete technical innovator. By way of a rolled-up sheet of music, the conductor’s baton was his idea. So are the numbered squares by which orchestral players keep track of the score.

Spohr, generally reckoned the equal of Paganini, was the ‘Other Great Violinist’, but less showy. Touring all over, (four times in Britain) he naturally wrote for his own instrument, 15 concerti in all, and there are recent versions of the 1st, 6th, 8th and 11th on two Naxos discs. He also produced what were called Quatuors brilliants, in which the first fiddle is a soloist. He was not however the prisoner of his own instrument.  Married to a virtuoso harpist, Dorette Scheidler, he wrote for the harp. Like Mozart, Weber, Brahms and Reger, he would write (beautifully) for the clarinet because he knew an outstanding soloist – in this case, Simon Hermstedt of Sondershausen – there are four concerti and a potpouri, all very fine. Anthony Burton spoke up for the symphonies, and versions of four are now available. There is a clutch of lieder, notably recorded by Ian Partridge, suggesting that the operas, headed by Jessonda, very successful in his lifetime, deserve at least recorded revival.

There is now a decent set of his music in any adequate record shop. One might start with the Nonet – which, at the lowest point in his standing, kept a slot in the repertoire, as did the Piano and Wind Quintet. Then there are those double quartets. Just look around: his music has the classical virtues, free of the bombast and grandstanding which, when he died 150 years ago, were busily vitiating late romanticism. Not just an innovator indeed, Louis Spohr was a late, very good vintage.

Edward Pearce

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