Spohr: Piano Trio Op. 119 / Piano Quintet Op. 130

He was one of music's great travellers, wrote an entertaining and informative autobiography, compiled an influential violin tutor, invented the chin-rest, was one of the pioneers of conducting with the baton and hit on the idea of putting letters in a score as an aid to rehearsals. So when, in a Hollywood film about music, a Leopold Stokowski-like conductor taps his baton at rehearsal and says to the orchestra: "Back to Letter F, gentlemen", it is Spohr's innovation we are witnessing.

Spohr was born in the North German city of Braunschweig (Brunswick) on 5th April 1784, and as a boy showed talent for the violin. When he was fifteen he joined the ducal orchestra and by the age of eighteen had reached the stage at which the Duke of Brunswick considered him ready for further development. He was, therefore, sent on a year-long study tour with the virtuoso Franz Anton Eck (1774 -1804), taking in various centres on the way to the then Russian capital St. Petersburg. It was at this time that Spohr wrote his first mature compositions - some violin duets followed by his first Violin Concerto, Op.1. After his return home, the Duke granted him leave to make a concert-tour of North Germany and Spohr shot to overnight fame in the German lands after a concert in Leipzig in December, 1804, received an enthusiastic review from the influential critic Friedrich Rochlitz - not only for his violin playing but also for his concertos, especially No.2 in D minor, Op. 2. Spohr now set out on successful career which took him as concertmaster to the court of Gotha (1805 - 12), orchestra leader at Vienna's Theater an der Wien, where he became friendly with Beethoven (1813 - 15), opera director at Frankfurt (1817 - 19) and finally, Hofkapellmeister at Kassel (1822 - 57) where he died on 22nd October, 1859. In between, he found time for numerous concert-tours, most notably to Italy (1816 - 17), England (1820) and Paris (1821), with his wife, the harp virtuoso Dorette Scheidler (1787 - 1834). In later years he reduced the number of his public violin appearances but his renown as a conductor led to many invitations to take charge of music festivals, including the inauguration of the Beethoven Monument in Bonn in 1845 as well as further visits to England in 1839, 1843, 1847, 1852 and 1853. He also trained some two hundred violinists, conductors and composers and, indeed, he was the antithesis of the "lonely, tormented artist" .He loved parties, was a gifted painter, an enthusiastic rose-grower, a keen swimmer and hiker, played chess, billiards, dominoes, whist and ball-games, and, as well as visiting such cultural attractions as art galleries, churches and the like, also toured factories, mines and other industrial installations, all in the pursuit of knowledge. He was also interested in politics and during the short-lived German national parliaments following the 1830 and 1848 revolutions he listened to as many debates as he was able. As a conductor Spohr championed many of the best composers of his time, even when he was not totally in sympathy with their style (Spohr's own idol and ideal was Mozart and, like his hero, Spohr was a committed Freemason). His repertoire ranged from Beethoven's symphonies, including the Ninth, concertos and quartets, Fidelio and the Missa solemnis, to Wagner's Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser, and he helped in the revival of earlier masterpieces such as Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Late in his career he added to his repertoire works by Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz and Liszt among others.

From the start of his career, Spohr aspired to be something more than just a violinist who wrote concertos, like Viotti, Kreutzer, Rode, Paganini, de Beriot, Vieuxtemps, Ernst or Wieniawski, and expanded his compositional scope to include opera, oratorio, cantata, lieder, symphony, chamber music and, especially in the first years of his marriage, works involving the harp. Gradually he took a place among the leading composers of his day, particularly for his fine concertos, overtures and first two symphonies. Soon after settling in Kassel, the success of his opera Jessonda in 1823 and his oratorio Die letzten Dinge (The Last Judgment) in 1826 won him a place in the accepted pantheon of great composers. Spohr's importance for his contemporaries and what captured them and enraptured them was his richness of harmony and command of modulation and chromaticism. While the content of his works made him, along with Weber, a pioneer of early Romanticism, he generally adhered to classical proportions when it came to form although his four programme symphonies helped to establish this genre. Later in the nineteenth century this classical side of his personality appeared old-fashioned to those brought up on the heady sounds of Wagner, Tchaikovsky or strauss and led to his relegation from his former high status. His best works, however, stayed in the repertoire throughout the century, while Jessonda was still staged at intervals in Germany (it was admired by Brahms and Strauss, among others) until it was banned by the Nazis because it showed a European hero marrying an Indian princess. In Great Britain The Last Judgment remained a favourite of provincial choral societies until the First World War when a reaction against things Victorian set in. A few works have stayed with us - the enjoyable Nonet and Octet are often performed by groups who want items to programme alongside the Beethoven Septet or the Schubert Octet; the 8th Violin Concerto, Op. 47, the one "in the form of vocal scena", can still tempt virtuosi; as can the four fine clarinet concertos (recorded on Naxos 8.550688-89). However, the slow revival of the rest of his output is only now under way but is already uncovering many delightful pieces.