4/5. Today the gracious elegance of Spohr's classicism may seem obscured by the high wall of Romanticism that followed him, and the grand gestures that were to come from the pens of Berlioz, Bruckner, Mahler, Strauss and the rest. Yet Spohr was a figure whose music laid many of the foundations that these composers would build on, and today Donald Macleod considers this aspect of the composer's work.
Symphony No 4 in F (Die Weihe der Tone) (1st mvt) Budapest SO, conductor Alfred Walter Piano Trio No 1 in E minor, Op 119 New Munich Piano Trio
Symphony No 7 in C (The Earthly and Divine in Human Life) (3rd mvt) Czecho-Slovak State
Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Alfred Walter
Repeated on Wednesday at 12 midnight