Franz Xaver Richter (1709-1789) Adagio & Fugue in G minor from Symphony No. 29 - Supraphon Recording

Описание: Symphony No. 29 in G minor Adagio and Fugue - Franz Xaver Richter, Composer

Orchestra puellarum Pragensis - Leoš Svárovský, Conductor

Orchestra puellarum Pragensis

℗ 1989 Supraphon a.s.

Released 2021-05-28

Franz Xaver Richter (December 1, 1709 Holleschau, Moravia - September 12, 1789) Czech: František Xaver Richter. French: François Xavier Richter. Austrian-Moravian singer, violinist, composer, conductor and music theoretician. Richter's career took him to Austria, and later to Mannheim and Strasbourg, where he was employed as music director of the cathedral. Haydn's favorite pupil, Ignaz Pleyel, became his deputy director beginning in 1783. Richter was the most traditional of the first-generation Mannheim school composers, highly regarded as a contrapuntist. Few records remain of his early life. It is likely he lived in Vienna between 1727 and 1736 where he studied Johann Joseph Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum, perhaps even with Fux himself, and Richter extensively arranged Antonio Caldara’s church music. In 1736, Richter was accepted as a bass singer in the Stuttgart Hofkapelle. He moved to the Benedictine Ritterakademie in Ettal the following year to work as director of music. In 1740, Richter entered the service of Bishop Prince Anselm von Reichlin-Meldegg in Kempten, Allgäu, as Vizekapellmeister, and later became Kapellmeister. Richter continued to perform in various court positions throughout his life, and in 1744 he established himself as a composer after publishing the 'Six grandes symphonies' for strings in Paris, which actually contained twelve symphonies in total.

Franz Xaver Richter was the oldest and most conservative of the Mannheim school of composers. Indeed, he seems to have found the school’s most characteristic traits - the 'Mannheim skyrocket', the 'Mannheim crescendo' and so on - thoroughly distasteful. Stylistically these symphonies, three of them in the minor mode (very un-Mannheim), are a curious mix of ancient and modern, Baroque and galant. Except for the severely fugal opening Allegro of the G minor, No 29, first movements suggest sonata form in embryo, with chains of Baroque-style sequences doing duty for 'development'. Occasional touches of quirkiness - say, in the weird harmonic clashes near the start of No 29’s finale - can evoke WF and CPE Bach, though in the main Richter lacks their wayward inventiveness and daring. (Gramophone)