This new Capriccio recording provides a superb demonstration of the variety and substance of Schreker’s music during the early decades of the 20th century. The earliest work here is the symphonic overture Ekkehard, completed in 1903 when the composer was 24. Based on a novel about the 10th-century St Gallen monk Ekkehard II, the piece contrasts episodes of nobility, passion and violence before concluding with an epilogue of rapt serenity. The Fantastic Overture from the following year has no overt theme but the brooding of its opening section, the restless energy of its development and the triumph of its conclusion suggest a struggle or a journey in the manner of Sibelius’s Lemminkäinen’s Return.

A very different musical landscape is found in the two songs of Vom ewigen Leben (‘On Eternal Life’), originally conceived for soprano and piano in 1923 and orchestrated four years later. Based on German translations of two texts from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, the work represents Schreker’s art at its most subtle and introspective. The scoring of the second song, featuring harmonium and saxophone, is especially imaginative and haunting, and the work overall leaves a deep impression.

The Vier kleine Stücke for large orchestra date from 1930, a time when Schreker was interested in the opportunities afforded by the new genre of film music. Although not a significant work in the composer’s output, the fourth piece demonstrates his ability to conjure melodies of beguiling lyricism and warmth. A career as a film composer was not to be, however, and the Vorspiel zu einer grossen Oper of 1933 proved to be Schreker’s last completed work, an imaginatively scored piece based on sketches for an unfinished opera on the subject of the Greek mythological hero Memnon.

Christopher Ward’s performances convey the drama and colour of Schreker’s earlier scores with tremendous panache, while Valda Wilson brings a refinement and inwardness to her performance of Vom ewigen Leben that matches the pioneering recording by Christine Barainsky (Koch Swann, 1/98 – nla). The Capriccio booklet includes texts in German and English, and the recording quality is exemplary.