JOSEPH MARX (1882-1964): Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 - Symphonische Nachtmusik, Eine Frühlingsmusic, Idylle (Concertino über die pastorale Quart).

Description: This was our featured item in April 2003 and here is the original blurb: “This may be the most remarkable find of the last year. Marx offers music here which combines the ethereal delicacy of French Impressionism (especially in the Idylle) and the rapt, sensuous, intoxicating, metaphysical ecstasy which one associates not only with Mahler (to think first of a fellow Austrian) but also of Scriabin and Bax (in his earlier flights of Celtic pantheistic fantasy). These three works were always intended to be performed as a cycle, the first composed in 1922 and the other two in 1925 but the difficulty and complexity of the scores led to cuts being made for all performances which did take place (under such conductors as Böhm, Reiner, Krauss and Oswald Kabasta) making this recording probably the first time Natur-Trilogie has been performed in its original form. Richly-colored, brilliantly orchestrated, brimming with romantic and lyrical passion, this work all but exudes the heady perfume of a surreal, nocturnal Mediterranean atmosphere in its first section, which is followed by a somewhat more chaste, pastoral second and which revisits the territory of ecstatic communion with nature in its third.” Bochum Symphony Orchestra; Steven Sloane. Original 2003 ASV release.