Franz Schmidt composed his Third Symphony in 1927/28, entering it in the Columbia Gramophone Co.’s “tribute to Schubert” competition, where it came in second to Atterberg’s Sixth (and not First, as the notes to this release claim). It’s an odd work: charming, tuneful, and shot through with a surprisingly high level of persistent yet gentle chromatic dissonance that renders the symphonic discourse almost completely tensionless. Certainly Vassily Sinaisky and his players deliver a very respectable performance, timing in at exactly the 50 minutes recommended in the score (Järvi gets through it in 42, probably to the work’s benefit). Where Schmidt gives the players the chance to be rambunctious, at the end of the scherzo and a couple of spots in the finale, they oblige admirably, so any fault lies with the composer and not the performance: pleasant, then, if not especially compelling.
The Chaconne, on the other hand, might be considered a more substantial piece than the symphony. It lasts nearly half an hour and has all of the architectural strength and melodic power that we’ve come to expect from works of this type since Bach’s benchmark effort in the same key of D minor. Sinaisky builds the piece to its epic final climax very well, save only that Schmidt’s imaginative rhythmic counterpoint for three tam-tams on the last pages doesn’t register at all. Otherwise, this well-recorded disc fills a useful gap in the catalog, as I suspect it will in many collections. If you are looking for these pieces, you can purchase this disc with confidence, though I suspect you’ll find the Chaconne much more interesting than the symphony.
