WEYSE: Symphonies Nos. 1-7
Royal Danish Ensemble/Michael Schønwandt
DACAPO 8.224012, 8.224013, 8.224014 [three CDs: 66:47 — 56:32, 54:18]
The symphonic output of Christoph Ernst Friedrich Weyse presents us with one of those curious problems that dog the edges of the classical canon. Here’s a composer who wrote seven perfectly respectable symphonies between 1795 and 1799—just when Haydn was producing his London set and before Beethoven had ventured past his First—and then simply stopped.
Walked away from the form entirely. The biographical notes by Carsten E. Hatting suggest an unhappy love affair silenced him from 1801 to 1807, but even after that fallow period Weyse never — returned to the symphony, turning instead to theater music and those Lieder im Volkston that made his reputation in Denmark.
What we have in these three DaCapo discs—the only complete production of the symphonies, drawn from sessions in Copenhagen in 1993-94—is a sustained glimpse into a compositional personality caught between influences. Weyse studied with J.A.P. Schulz (himself imported from Berlin), lived in the shadow of C.P.E.
Bach’s Hamburg, and absorbed the Viennese classics with the thoroughness of a devoted apprentice. The results are… well, they’re not quite Haydn, though they often sound remarkably like him.
Not quite Mozart, though the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony has those telling melodic chromaticisms. Certainly not Beethoven, who was already beginning to detonate the form even as Weyse was consolidating his modest achievements. The First Symphony in G minor announces its seriousness immediately—minor-key symphonies were still relatively rare in 1795, reserved for works of particular expressive ambition.
The opening Allegro con spirito has genuine urgency — with those “violent modulations” (as the notes accurately describe them) creating real harmonic tension. But then the invention flags. That "finale" worries the initial theme to exhaustion, and while Weyse revised the work in 1805, one senses him trying to impose coherence on material that resists it.
The minuet, though, has real character—that touch of drama in the minor mode shows what he could do when he trusted his instincts rather than his models. By the Second and Third Symphonies we’re in more conventional territory. The C major Second opens with fanfares that wouldn’t be out of place in a Haydn Salomon symphony, and the slow movement’s Gluckian serenity is beautifully achieved—those variations where a little figure gets tossed from instrument to instrument have genuine charm.
The "finale", later adapted as an overture to his opera The Sleeping Draught, works better in that theatrical context, I suspect, than as symphonic argument. The D major Third is similarly well-crafted, with some clever Haydnesque rhythmic games; in the minuet, but the overall impression is of competence rather than inspiration. Then something shifts.
The Fourth Symphony in E minor—another minor-key work—has a gravitas the earlier pieces only gestured toward. That majestic Grave introduction isn’t merely preparatory throat-clearing; it casts a shadow over everything that follows. The Largo really does sound Mozartian, not just in its elegiac tone but in the way — the clarinet (still a relative novelty in 1795) colors the wind texture without drawing attention to itself.
And that "finale"! A triple fugue that actually earns its contrapuntal complexity, with Weyse managing those constant key shifts without losing the thread. Michael Schønwandt and — well — the Royal Danish Orchestra bring real weight to this movement—one hears the cellos digging into that downward-moving theme with conviction.
You can almost hear the rosin dust settling on the strings.
But it’s the Fifth Symphony in E-flat that justifies this entire project. Here, finally, is Weyse writing with what the original reviewer calls “true feeling, inventiveness and colourful orchestration”—and he’s not wrong. The 1838 revision adds two clarinets and a trombone, and while purists might object to hearing the later version rather than the 1796 original, the enhanced colors are too good to regret.
That Maestoso introduction has genuine majesty, and when the Allegro con brio breaks loose in sweeping 3/4 time, the effect is genuinely exhilarating. The slow movement’s dialogue between solo violin and orchestra flirts with concertante textures without quite committing—an interesting compositional choice that keeps the movement from fragmenting. And Weyse’s decision to import the minuet from his First Symphony and re-score it for the larger orchestra?
Inspired. Those gentle clarinet tones in the trio are worth the entire revision. The "finale" combines two themes in a fugue that never feels academic, never loses its propulsive energy.
This is a symphony that deserves to be heard. The Sixth in C minor returns to that key’s implications of gravity and expressive depth. Weyse sent this one to his former teacher Schulz for evaluation, and the older man’s criticisms about overly heavy instrumentation led to revisions we hear in the printed version.
That opening Maestoso with its upward-moving scales and dotted rhythms has real authority, and the Largo with its horn solo over low strings creates a genuinely exquisite sonority. But the minuet drags—Schønwandt’s tempo here is simply too careful, too respectful of the dotted rhythms at the expense of forward motion. The "finale" recovers with its variety of musical ideas and that mastery of classical polyphony where motifs in different rhythms combine to create textural richness rather than mere busyness.
The Seventh and final symphony, in E-flat again, has an ease about it that suggests Weyse had finally stopped struggling with the form. That opening Allegro with its lyrical string theme in 3/4 time is genuinely charming, and the way the secondary theme emerges in B-flat major feels natural rather than calculated. The Andante variations show real sophistication in their orchestration—that oboe solo floating through the fourth variation is a lovely moment, and the way Weyse brings in the flute and bassoon almost alone in the coda shows the kind of coloristic imagination that might have developed further had he continued with the symphony.
The "finale" combines sonata and r
