It is a familiar problem of Austro-German late-romanticism that lesser composers often produced works as large-scale as those of their greater contemporaries. Hans Pfitzner's opera Palestrina undoubtedly justifies its large dimensions, and this month's CD reissue of the 1974 DG recording is most welcome (see page 234). But even Palestrina has its longueurs, an occasional opaqueness proving how hard it was to sustain the grand perspectives seemingly required of the heirs of Wagner and the contemporaries of Richard Strauss.
Strikingly, it is Humperdinck, rather than Wagner or Strauss, that the earliest music on this disc evokes. The Overture to Das Christelflein (1906) has the melodic charm of Hansel und Gretel, as well as those harmonic quirks not unappealing, often disconcerting—personal to Pfitzner himself. By 1922, the year of the Piano Concerto, the personal is abundantly, even defiantly evident. After a bombastic opening hinting at Rachmaninov the Concerto displays many individual formal features that help to make its considerable length seem more than merely self-indulgent. Even so, Pfitzner's moods are more memorable than his melodies—especially his darker side, sometimes summoning up the distant spirit of Schumann. After an insistent yet playful scherzo and a rather static slow movement the finale, for all its relatively unforced lightness of tone, reveals Pfitzner's difficulty in maintaining long-range thought at the worst possible moment, during its ambitious fugal cadenza.
Wolf Harden is a muscular soloist who rings the emotional changes with flair, but the recording is heavy, even harsh in sound, something which may help to explain the ponderous effect of the two orchestral works. Both the Christelflein Overture and the extract from the opera Das Herz (1931) should surely have a more natural flow. The latter doesn't convince me that Pfitzner's idiom was still a vital force after 1930, but there is genuine warmth of expression in the music, even so.'