Album

This is precisely the sort of disc that great classical record companies should release: world-premiere recordings of fascinating music superbly played and realistically recorded. That one of the works on this disc fell into oblivion for 170 years is the way of the world and that no other company has yet recorded this music is their and our loss. The Concerto Köln, the German period instrument chamber orchestra specializing in the works of the high classical period, has found in the last two symphonies of Johann Wilhelm Wilms (1772-1847) a wholly individualistic composer of classical training and Romantic aspirations and whose last two symphonies in D minor and C minor are strikingly scored, memorably melodic, and altogether convincing. Wilms wrote his first symphonies in the manner of Mozart and Haydn in the 1790s, but by the time he composed his last symphonies in the 1830s, his music had become more highly colored and more vividly dramatic, his high classical manner infused with the deep passion, and if Wilms is still no Romantic revolutionary in the style of Berlioz, neither is he a Romantic reactionary in the style of Mendelssohn. In these brilliantly recorded realizations by the Concerto Köln, Wilms' last symphonies have the heroic rhetoric of the music of the Revolution clothed in the colors of Delacroix. Archiv's sound is honest and real and true.

© James Leonard, All Music Guide

CD 1
Johann Wilhelm Wilms Composer Symphony No.6 in D-, Op.58 Work 31:00 Werner Ehrhardt Conductor, Concerto Köln Ensemble
1	1.Adagio - Allegro molto e con fuoco	12:13			$1.99
2	2.Andante quasi allegretto e grazioso	7:40			$1.49
3	3.Scherzo: Allegretto - Trio	5:58			$0.99
4	4.Rondo: Allegro molto	5:09			$0.99
Johann Wilhelm Wilms Composer Symphony No.7 in C- Work 29:44 Werner Ehrhardt Conductor, Concerto Köln Ensemble
5	1.Andante - Allegro	11:10			$1.99
6	2.Poco adagio	7:32			$1.49
7	3.Scherzo - Trio	3:24			$0.99
8	4.Allegro con fuoco	7:38			$1.49