Bruch - Die Loreley

The Guardian 60

Kaune/Hinterdobler/Munich Radio SO/Blunier
(CPO, three CDs)
The second of Bruch’s three operas is an example of the byways of 19th-century Romanticism

Max Bruch’s place in the musical pantheon is guaranteed by a single work. His First Violin Concerto regularly ranks high on lists of the most performed classical pieces, while little else from his 60-year career has achieved anything like the same popularity. Born in 1838, Bruch lived through some of the greatest stylistic upheavals in the history of European music, but remained impervious to all of them; right up to his death in 1920, he remained faithful to the Romanticism he’d inherited from Mendelssohn and Schumann.

Among the raft of his forgotten works are three operas, of which Die Loreley was the second. Premiered in Mannheim in 1863, it had a few years of success before lapsing into obscurity, and though Bruch revised the score in 1887 for performances conducted by the young Gustav Mahler, it’s hardly been heard since. This Bavarian Radio recording, taken from a performance in Munich in 2014, is the first to make it complete on to disc.