WOLF, E.W.: Symphonies in E Minor / G Major / DESTOUCHES, F.S. von: Symphony in D Major
Weimar Staatskapelle, Gulke
C71128

Each Friday we select a track from a Naxos Music Group album released twenty years ago to provide the accompaniment for five minutes of your downtime.

This week’s pick from the Capriccio label is by Ernst Wilhelm Wolf (1735–1792), a leading musical personality in Weimar for nearly 30 years, initially as organist and eventually as kapellmeister at the court chapel. He composed almost 40 symphonies between 1770 and 1790, and the large scale of his later ones, with their characteristic use of certain forms, varied treatment of the winds, and elements of motivic and thematic work, clearly reflect the influence of the Viennese School. Here’s the first movement of Wolf’s E minor Symphony, probably written between 1785 and 1790, in which the key and Sturm-und-Drang dramatics of the opening movement reflect the influence of Haydn’s minor-key symphonies.