Ferdinand Hiller - Symphonies (Howard Griffiths)

Information

Composer: Ferdinand Hiller

• Symphony op. 67 "Es muß doch Frühling werden" in E Minor
• Symphony HWV 2.4.4 in F Minor

Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt

Howard Griffiths, conductor

Date: 2025

Label: CPO

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Ferdinand Hiller (1811–1885) was the son of a wealthy industrialist from Frankfurt am Main. He began studying with Johann Nepomuk Hummel in Weimar at the age of ten, lived for several years in Paris, and finally settled in Cologne in 1850. He took over the leadership of the Gürzenich Orchestra and the municipal conservatory, organized twelve of the Lower Rhine Music Festivals, and played a prominent role in the musical scene of the cathedral city. Nevertheless, the oeuvre of the early-talented composer Ferdinand Hiller still requires careful review and evaluation, for which the two symphonies presented here, in f minor (1832) and e minor (1848), provide insightful aids – two passionate, dramatic works of a sanguine temperament, which delighted in forcing its ideas into classical forms and relished the fact that they audibly touched the boundaries.