Cartellieri’s Four Excellent Symphonies
(Evergreen Symphony Orchestra/ Gernot Schmalfuss)
Review by: David Hurwitz
Artistic Quality: 10
Sound Quality: 10
Antonio Cartellieri (1772-1807), despite his Italian name, actually was trained in Berlin and Vienna, and his music has all of the best characteristics of Viennese classicism. Indeed, his models are easy to detect: Gluck’s “Dance of the Furies” in the finale of his Symphony No. 1 (in C minor), and Haydn’s Symphony No. 86 in the first movement of Symphony No. 4. Of course, there’s no way to tell if he knew these other pieces, or even when Cartellieri’s were composed. He isn’t exactly a household name, and Gernot Schmalfuss spent something like 10 years looking for two of these works. These four symphonies are all that Cartellieri wrote, evidently.
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