Pfitzner described his choral fantasy Das dunkle Reich (''The Dark Kingdom'', 1929) as ''a sort of literary mass for the dead''. In it he sublimated his grief for his first wife, who had died three years before. The text was assembled principally from the writings of C. F. Meyer, interspersed with passages by Goethe, Dehmel and Michelangelo; the third of the eight sections, ''Dance of Life'', is purely orchestral. Whilst not on the scale of Von Deutsche Seele (1921), Das dunkle Reich is of comparable stature, although more sombre in tone: even the livelier moments lie under the shadow. Yet from its grimness of vision emerges an elevating, Mahlerian nobility of spirit.
The seeds of Pfitzner's mature style can be heard fitfully in the 1888 ballad, Der Blumen Rache (''The Flower's Revenge''). This apprentice composition is perhaps a little too Wagnerian for its own good and it lacks the sweep of the great Herr Oluf, written just three years later, but Der Blumen Rache is none the less an impressive achievement, full of invention. The hymn Fons salutifer (1942) was written to inaugurate a new fountain in Karlsbad. A short, occasional piece, its straightforward melodic style is in marked contrast to the autumnal glow of its couplings here.
The performances of all three works sound well-prepared and idiomatic, the recordings very clean. Conductor Rolf Reuter (president of the Pfitzner Society) is clearly devoted to this cause, though his 13 F. sympathetic interpretations could have benefited from a little more urgency in places.'