Nicolai von Wilm (1834-1911): Volker und Zeiten im Spiegel ihrer Tanze, op 31, etc.

Nicolai von Wilm (1834-1911): Völker und Zeiten im Spiegel ihrer Tänze, op 31, etc.
John Kersey, piano
RDR CD79

Audio sample: Entblätterte Rose

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Total time: 67 minutes 53 seconds

Völker und Zeiten im Spiegel ihrer Tänze (Nations and Epochs illustrated by their Dances), op. 31
1. Roundelay (German) (3’07”) 2. Sarabande (Spanish) (2’31”) 3. Gavotte and Tambourin (Old French) (3’01”) 4. Ländler (Bavarian) (3’15”) 5. Rigaudon (Provençal) (5’02”) 6. Mazurka (Polish) (2’36”) 7. Minuet (Old French) (3’25”) 8. Bolero (Spanish) (3’10”) 9. Bourrée (Old French) (2’42”) 10. Rustic Dance (Norwegian) (2’08”) 11. Gigue (Old French) (2’53”) 12. Dance of the Rhinelanders (German) (3’26”) 13. Csardas (Hungarian) (4’13”) 14. Loure (Old French) (3’33”) 15. Pavane (Old Spanish) and Gaillarde (Old French) (2’56”)

16. Melodie, op 113 (3’41”)
17. Bilder vom Lande, op 146: no 1Ankunft (3’43”)
18. Klage, op 194 vol 1 no 2 (3’39”)
19. Ergebung, op 194 vol 2 no 6 (2’54”)
20. Entblätterte Rose (2’10”’)
21. Loure (Old French Dance) (1’11”)
22. Frohe Botschaft, op 196 no 6 (2’21”)

Our thanks to Dr Klaus Tischendorf for supplying scores of these rare works.

Notes on the music
Nicolai von Wilm was born in Riga in 1834 and studied at the Leipzig Conservatoire between 1851 and 1856. The following year he returned to Riga to take up the position of second Kapellmeister at the State Theatre. In 1860 he moved to the Nikolai Institute in St Petersburg, where he taught until 1875, after which he made his home in Wiesbaden.

von Wilm’s output includes around 250 works, including many for piano. This disc represents the first recording of any of his piano compositions. His neglect is surprising in view of the esteem in which he was held in his lifetime, particularly during his time at St Petersburg, and the high quality of his music, which embraces both large-scale works such as the Fantaisie in F minor (recorded on CD78) and much in shorter forms.

The set of dances forming op 31 is typical of the nationalistic element that became particularly predominant in music of the later Romantic era, as music became increasingly the expression of ethnic – and often political – identity. The pleasure in such sets lies in their ready characterisation of the forms they encompass; those who consider the nineteenth-century uninterested in the baroque might well look to the number of Old French dances revived here, as they also are in the very similar suite of ancient dances op 75 by Ernst Pauer (previously recorded for RDR). von Wilm is concerned throughout with stamping his own musical personality on each miniature; although sometimes given to reflection, he comes across as a rather vigorous and energetic character with a thorough command of the piano’s capabilities.

This is then complimented with a journey through some of von Wilm’s miniatures from other groups. The first movement from his op 146 set of countryside evocations is the most extensive, being a truncated sonata form that has much of Schumann about it and whose appeal is considerable. Other works include those published in the Neuen Musik-Zeitung of 1909; calling-cards, as it were, of von Wilm’s art.

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