Reznicek: Orchestral Suites

Our comprehensive and successful Reznicek edition now presents three very different works – the Symphonic Suite No. 1 (1882), Dream Play Suite (1915/21), and Carnival Suite (1932) – which the composer nonetheless assigned to the suite genre. Taken together, they document his compositional and stylistic development over the decades. Moreover, they are performed by an orchestra that Reznicek himself once had conducted for a short time: the Weimar State Orchestra. His Symphonic Suite is more like a three-movement symphony for full orchestra. It is clearly audible that here Reznicek is not concerned with motivic work and thematic fission but with the contrast of moods. The harmony and the instrumentation leave little doubt about its source of inspiration in Wagner. The suite from the incidental music to Strindberg’s Dream Play is a series of short, atmospherically dense musical pictures, and in terms of its compositional history the Carnival Suite is a symphonic intermezzo dividing the opera Gondoliere des Dogen into two parts.