The Austrian Felix Weingartner (1863-1942) is nowadays best known for conducting the first recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms symphonies. In his own day, though, he was equally renowned as a composer, especially of symphonic music and opera. Die Dorfschule (The Temple School) was his tenth out of a grand total of 12. The plot comes from a gripping Kabuki play about 10th-century Japanese feudal politics. An exiled chancellor’s son, Kwan Shusai, has been secretly brought up by Genzo, a loyal samurai who, along with his long-suffering wife, is now running a school. When the noble, Matsuo, demands the boy’s severed head, Genzo murders a recently enrolled pupil instead. Only at the end do we discover the dead boy is actually Matsuo’s own son who he enrolled in Genzo’s school as a decoy to save the life of Kwan Shusai. A contemporary of Strauss, Weingartner’s music sounds a little leaner, yet he’s very much a student of the post-Wagner school. But where the symphonies are often sumptuous, Die Dorfschule has an austerity that marries perfectly with its grim tale of honour and sacrifice. Only in the Imperial march does the composer let his hair down. The cast are… Continue reading…

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