‘Karl Weigl’s music will not be lost. We will return to it after the storm has passed. We will return to those who have written real music.’ So said Pablo Casals‚ and it may be that Weigl’s almost complete neglect is primarily an accident of history: the composer‚ a Zemlinsky pupil‚ Jewish and Left­leaning‚ escaped Nazi persecution in 1938‚ finding work in the USA as an academic without building a substantial following for his own music. If you warmed to the benign conservatism of the First and Fifth Quartets‚ so ably championed by the Artis Quartet (Nimbus‚ 8/00 – nla)‚ the opening of this Apocalyptic Symphony may come as a shock. The orchestral musicians are instructed to enter and tune up‚ three trombones and a tuba emerging from their midst to present the material on which the symphonic argument will be based. Perhaps this coup de théâtre is what inspired Leopold Stokowski to give the symphony a belated première in 1968. Or might it have been the dedication‚ shared with Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp‚ to the memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Whatever the case‚ the rest of the work proves greyer‚ very nearly as backward­looking as Furtwängler’s contemporaneous Second Symphony – an odd sort of tribute to the bravely progressive President of Weigl’s adoptive country – and much less tuneful than the Korngold! Brahms‚ Wagner‚ Franz Schmidt and (very) early Schoenberg loom large; only the third movement‚ an overtly Brucknerian threnody entitled ‘Paradise Lost’‚ has the kind of melodic distinction and lucidity of texture I was expecting. This at least is worth sampling‚ as is the makeweight‚ an earlier‚ less insistently Germanic piece‚ preserving more of the edge and iridescence of Zemlinsky’s orchestral writing. The recording as such is well handled‚ but‚ while there is some characterful wind playing‚ Sanderling’s strings sound inadequately prepared‚ the violins surprisingly parched and weary above the stave. All in all‚ a disappointing release.