Eloquence Classics

During the golden age of the LP, Horst Stein was among a select band of central-European conductors (Vaclav Neumann and Otmar Suitner are another two notable examples) revered by Japanese orchestras and audiences, perhaps more than their Western counterparts. They had an uncomplicated mastery of the repertoire that shunned interpretative eccentricity and plugged listeners into a strong current of cultivated orchestral sonority which seemed to grow from and continue a Kapellmeister lineage that built the great orchestras of the world in the first place.

As chief conductor of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Stein made recordings of Sibelius that have been prized since their first issue which have been collected together on another Eloquence release (482 3922). The present release returns to Stein’s heartland of German Romanticism. Indeed the progression from Weber to Wagner to Wolf, traces the eventful development of the Romantic movement in music over 80 years, from the daring, post-Schubertian harmonies of Weber’s Symphony (no less touched by lyric genius than his music for the stage) to the tumultuous and multi-climactic tone-poem that is Wolf’s ‘Penthesilea’ which tells the story of an Amazon queen’s gruesome revenge for thwarted passion.