I have been listening to two violin concertos by Friedrich Gernsheim. Yes, the famous Friedrich Gernsheim, born in Germany in 1839, died in 1916 and a friend of Brahms, Joachim, Rossini and Max Bruch. Like the fifteen (!) violin concertos of Louis Spohr, or seven of Henri Vieuxtemps, these concertos belong to the lost legions of 18th and 19th century music. The works are not earth-shaking or mind-blowing; they inhabit a safe sound world of the Romantic era, a sound world similar to that of Max Bruch. Not all music can reach the heights of Bach's Mass in B minor, or the late Beethoven string quartets, but so much thoroughly enjoyable music of the past is just never heard. The two concertos here (the first and the second) demand a lot of work from the violin soloist, and a degree of virtuosity. On my CD they are played by a highly competent Linus Roth, with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Johannes Zurl.
The CD came from the company CPO (that also gave us a box of the fifteen Spohr concertos). Naxos is not the only company that is good for exhumations. A reminder that recorded media are invaluable when it comes to re-discovering long-lost music (the soprano Simone Kermes did similar valuable service recently in bringing to our attention the music of Johann Adolf Hasse -- 1699-1783).
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