Felix Woyrsch (1860-1944)
Symphonie n° 3, op. 70
Trois fantaisie Boecklin, op. 53

Oldenburgisches Staatsorchester
Thomas Dorsch, direction

Avouons-le, jusqu’à ce que CPO se saisisse de sa réhabilitation et décide de graver ses symphonies, que savions-nous de Felix Woyrsch ? Ce compositeur allemand autodidacte se rattache à la grande tradition héritée de Brahms, mais enrichie par la connaissance de Wagner et Bruckner. Sa 3° symphonie a beau dater de 1928, elle reste totalement tributaire d’un monde sonore post-romantique qui rapproche Woyrsch de Pfitzner plus que de Hindemith ou de Schœnberg. Abstraction faite de cet aspect anachronique d’ailleurs assumé, l’œuvre est une découverte de belle envergure. Plus intéressantes encore sont les trois fantaisies d’après Böcklin de 1910 qui montrent que Woyrsch était aussi un coloriste et un orchestrateur hors pair. On pourra comparer sa mise en musique avec les quatre poèmes de Max Reger d’après Arnold Böcklin, immédiatement postérieurs et constater que l’œuvre de Woyrsch soutient la comparaison sans faiblir. Le volet central (Der Eremit) en particulier est magistral. Les interprètes à qui l’on doit une symphonie n° 2 précédentes sont sans reproche. Une fois encore, chapeau à CPO ! (Richard Wander)

The symphonist Felix Woyrsch experienced what Brahms had gone through before him: he too had to shoulder the oppressive burden of the mighty symphonic legacy, which for him included not only Beethoven but also the lofty masterpieces of Bruckner and Brahms. For him it was thus much more difficult to come forward with his own idea of the symphony, especially since he did not aspire to break with the tradition but sought a negotiable path for the continuance of the symphonic tradition of the nineteenth century in his own personal manner. While Brahms approached the symphony by way of chamber music, Woyrsch seems to have taken his route to absolute symphonic music by way of programmatic symphonic music. In their character, however his Three Böcklin Fantasies composed two years after his Symphony No. 1 also belong to the group of works preparing for his symphonic style, for here Woyrsch drew on the coloristic resources of instrumentation and coloring harmony as in hardly any other work by him. The fantasies became his most successful work in the field of orchestral music. Although he never wanted to be an innovator and revolutionary, his Symphony No. 3 has a thoroughly chromaticized, frequently dissonant tonal idiom justifying its claim to the status of an »Apocalyptic Symphony« in the context of his oeuvre.