Johanna Senfter: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 9
Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz
Chelsea Gallo, conductor
Label: Capriccio
Catalogue No.: C5555
Format: CD / digital download / streaming
Release Date: 15 May 2026
Total Time: approximately 70 minutes
Works:
Johanna Senfter: Symphony No. 1 in F major, Op. 22
Johanna Senfter: Symphony No. 9 in E-flat minor, Op. 117, Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir
Recording Note: World premiere recording
Johanna Senfter studied with Max Reger, won prizes in her own lifetime, wrote nine symphonies. Then she vanished from the repertoire almost entirely. This Capriccio release — world premiere recordings of her First and Ninth — makes the case for why that happened, and why it shouldn’t have.
The pairing works. The First, finished in 1914, sits right at the edge of catastrophe nobody in the hall could yet see coming. Reger’s fingerprints are all over it: dense counterpoint, big climaxes, a density of texture that never lets up. But calling it derivative misses what Senfter does with pressure. Her phrases push against harmonic resistance instead of resolving easily. Even the lyrical stretches carry a kind of muscular unease underneath.
Chelsea Gallo and the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz give it real advocacy. The first movement has weight without turning congested — Senfter’s lines get room to breathe inside the orchestration. The slow movement is inward, its lyricism shadowed rather than sweet. The march-like finale suggests a composer who understood public gesture but wouldn’t cash it in for bombast. Ardent. Ambitious. Already troubled by what was coming.
The Ninth, from 1949, is the real find. Its subtitle — Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, “Out of deep distress I cry to you” — tells you where it lives. This is a postwar symphony. Senfter doesn’t reach for the shattered avant-garde idiom that so many of her contemporaries did; her rhetoric is broader instead, darker, more searching. The First strains toward assertion. The Ninth speaks from endurance.
Gallo takes her time with it. The first movement has a grave breadth and never rushes. The scherzo brings nervous motion rather than relief. The slow third movement is where the disc’s emotional center sits — Senfter mourns here, but she also thinks, and that combination is rare. The finale doesn’t offer easy consolation; its energy comes out of struggle, and the ending is earned.
What sets this recording apart: nobody’s pleading Senfter’s case. The orchestra plays with clarity and real command of how dense her writing gets. Gallo keeps the focus on structure and momentum, steering clear of both overblown Romantic gesture and dry note-reading.
Two symphonies, thirty-five years apart. One written before the fire, one written after. Together they trace a life — discipline, conviction, and the kind of upheaval nobody gets to opt out of.
If you already love Reger, Pfitzner, or early Hindemith, don’t skip this one.
