Perhaps unsurprisingly, such productivity went alongside inconsistent levels of inspiration (many critics have put it less politely)-one reason why his reputation went into sharp decline after his death, particularly outside Germany. His worklist, ranging across virtually every genre except opera and ballet, includes 147 numbered opuses (the most substantial pieces on this disc, Der Einsiedler and Requiem, together make up Op 144 and are among the last he composed), as well as many, like Palmsonntagmorgen, that he considered insufficiently important to merit a number. The brevity and self-indulgence of Max Reger’s life-he died at just forty-three, owing in large part to excessive consumption of alcohol, tobacco and food-did not prevent him from composing an enormous quantity of music. Richard Stokes’s comment, that ‘Reger does not always lose out in comparison’ (when he and Strauss set the same texts as Lieder), could apply equally well to his choral music.
The works recorded here set many of the same poets (and even some of the same poems) that were popular among his colleagues, with a sensitivity and intuitive understanding that belie Reger’s reputation for stodgy academicism. Like his near contemporaries, Mahler, Strauss, Wolf and Zemlinsky, Reger responded deeply and imaginatively to the German Romantic poetic tradition. This disc offers a chance to redress the balance, both by bringing to light an aspect of Reger’s output that has been relatively neglected, and by demonstrating that the important influences on him were not just musical but literary. A second disc from new chamber choir Consortium, who were acclaimed for their disc of Brahms’s secular partsongs.Īlthough Reger’s music has partly recovered from its deeply unfashionable reputation, much of this prolific composer’s work still remains underperformed.
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