Johann Joseph Abert – A musical portrait

Johann Joseph Abert – Ein musikalisches Portrait; ARS Produktion
Reviewed by Andreas Rey (17 September 2025) 

An ethnic German born in the Sudetenland area of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), Johann Joseph Abert studied at the Prague Conservatoire and became court kapellmeister in Stuttgart. Of his many symphonies and operas, little has made it to disc and this enterprising new selection of Abert’s works provides a tempting starter.

This new disc from ARS Produktion is a portrait of the German composer Johann Joseph Abert, a kind of bait or, rather, bird call for curious music lovers, which explains why this disc contains only excerpts.

A German composer born in 1832, Johann Josph Albert’s fame began in 1860. As a composer of chamber music, organ music, lieder, and operas, as this musical portrait shows, he was as much appreciated professionally as he was personally by his peers. A meeting with the singer and composer Pauline Viardot in 1864 led to a life-long friendship and it was Viardot’s support that ultimately led to his appointment as court kapellmeister in Stuttgart where he remained until 1888.

Indeed, he has no reason to be ashamed of Brahms and Schuman, whose works he conducted at Wurttemberg, where he was composer and conductor to the royal court. After discovering him here, fans will want another disc of excerpts from his music for large ensembles, as Abert also composed symphonies, masses, overtures, and concertante music.

Fans can listen to lieder, excerpts from his operas Columbus and Astorga, reworked for piano and voice, the Adagio and Scherzo from his quartet, and preludes for organ. With this partial overview of his work, they enjoy discovering his style. Sitting between Brahms and the coming modernity, embodied above all by Richard Strauss, Mahler, and Zemlinsky, he has left us an interesting body of work, with pleasant lieder in the beautiful nebula around those of Schubert and Brahms, and above all a very modern string quartet, here played by the Abert Quartet from Stuttgart, with its abrupt tones, ruptures and breaks approaching those of the moderns.

Johann Joseph Abert

You must overlook the singers’ frailties, such as the slightly sour high notes of the soprano Larissa Wäspy and mezzo-soprano Roswitha Sicca and somewhat stilted manner of the tenor Martin Nagy, the baritone Thomas Pferffer and the bass baritone Claus Temps, to discover a different sensibility emerging with him, with a harshness, a hardness, and sharp edges. The same is true of his organ works, still very much inspired by the Bach he studied in his student days, indicating another era.

Alongside Brahms, Lizst and Schumann, and ahead of Richard Strauss, Paul Hindemith and Hans Pfizner, Abert left a body of work that sought to break new ground, but was still very much part of its time. Richard Strauss himself, before becoming a convinced Wagnerian, was a Brahmsian of the first order, as his Burlesque for piano and orchestra shows. But this does not prevent his compositions from being honest and of the highest quality.

Beyond Albert’s persona, this disc offers a glimpse into his era. Abert shared with his peers a state of mind, a sort of Zeitgeist, which this disc conveys very well, a desire to transcend Romanticism without succeeding. We will have to wait for the next generation of Richard Strauss, Paul Hindemith and Hans Pfizner for that. Abert’s work is no less deserving, and will be much appreciated in concert.

A society of Abert’s friends was created after his death. It still exists today. Today, these societies of friends of neglected composers are undoubtedly the best way to renew the musical picture of the past.

For those interested in exploring the composer further, his five-act romantic opera Ekkehard (which premiered in Berlin in 1878) was recorded for Capriccio in 1998 with a young Jonas Kaufmann and the SWR Rundfunkorchester Kaiserslautern conducted by Peter Falk [further details].

Reviewed by Andreas Rey 

Early songs
    An Lina (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
    Various sensations in one place (Goethe)
    Separation pain (Theobald Kerner) op. 5 (1854)
    Lovely reputation (Kerner) op. 6 (1854)
    Mother and Daughter (Feodor Löwe) op. 7 (1854)
String quartet in A major op. 25, excerpts (1862, published 1864)
Two Preludes for organ (1864)
Evening on the sea from Columbus (Musikalisches Seegemälde in Form einer Sinfonie op. 31) arranged for piano duet, Ludwig Stark (1864/1875)
Astorga – Romantic opera in three acts (text by Ernst Pasqué)(1866), excerpts
    Piano reduction by Carl Herrmann (1866)
Late songs
    Six Songs for a voice accompanied by the pianoforte (1879)
    Des Glasers Töchterlein (1879)

Larissa Wäspy (soprano)
Roswitha Sicca (mezzo-soprano)
Thomas Pfeiffer (baritone)
Martin Nagy (tenor)
Claus Temps (bass-baritone)
Ljiljana Borota (piano)
Megumi Sano (piano)
Heike Bleckmann (piano)
Ira Maria Witoschynskyj (piano)
Joachim Draheim (piano)
Jürgen Rieger (organ)
Abert Quartett Stuttgart (Monica Hölszky-Wiedemann, Sonoko Imai, Horst Strohfeldt, Irene Genal)

Johann Joseph Abert – Ein musikalisches Portrait
ARS Produktion ARS 38 679 1CD [68.49]