BEAUTIFULLY POISED

'... the music is vibrant, insistent, and as urgently thrusting
as the celebrated "Sturm und Drang" start
to the early G minor Symphony ... by Mozart ...'

The symphonies of Joseph Martin Kraus -
with RODERIC DUNNETT

The recorded sound on this Kraus series may be a little less high quality than it could be, but it's certainly atmospheric. By the time the C sharp minor Sinfonia's opening andante cedes to allegro, these Swedish players get into full stride, and the music is vibrant, insistent, and as urgently thrusting as the celebrated Sturm und Drang start to the early G minor Symphony, K183, by Kraus's almost exact contemporary, Mozart, which so terrifyingly launches the film Amadeus. The same applies in slow vein to the doomladen drumming opening of Kraus's C minor Symphony : Don Giovanni embraces the funereal grandeur of Berlioz's Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale.

The Swedish players bring equally atmospheric playing to the slow sections : the sudden pianissimo three minutes into the C sharp minor's slow movement is a breathtaking moment, and the lower strings in the chorale and larghetto of the C minor deliver likewise a searingly beautiful sound. Kraus's scoring -- with some striking use of horns, for instance, in the former -- is simple but effective.

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