CD 82

Symphonies Arranged for Piano Duet

1846  was  perhaps  Johann Rufi natscha’s most successful year as a composer. Several concerts in Vienna presented compositions exclusively by the young Tyrolean composer and  were  enthusiastically received by both the public and  the  press.  Rufinatscha proved himself above all as a  composer  of  large-scale symphonies. This alone gave a musician the status of a master in the age of Romanticism. According to contemporary reports,   the   public   was particularly  amazed  at  the many novel effects in sound and  form.  Rufinatscha  had been a master pupil of the gifted theory teacher Simon Sechter and  was  able  to  introduce many of the latter’s innovative ideas in his symphonic work. Much of Sechter’s spiritual legacy, which was not to be fully realized until Bruckner’s genius, is prefi gured in more than  germinal  form  in  the work of Rufi natscha, who was younger by a generation. Many transitions, especially in the slow movements, already hint at the particular atmosphere of  Bruckner’s  music.  The relationship   between   the march   at   the   beginning of  Rufinatscha’s  C  Minor Symphony and the beginning of Bruckner’s First Symphony in the same key, for instance, is  obvious  for  more  than common intent. Striking also are the similarities in formal disposition, such as placing the scherzo second. Rufinatscha proved  to  be  an  extremely progressive symphonist, whose great talent borders on genius. After the Vienna premiere of his  C  Minor  Symphony  in the autumn of 1846, a critic wrote  that  he  considered  it “criticism’s most sacred duty to recommend such symphonic talent enthusiastically to the world at large.”

Track 1, 1:30
Symphonie in c-minor
Allegro molto

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