![]() The Vienna Philharmonic premiered this Interlude “from an unfinished Romantic opera” on December 6, 1903. The first music he wrote for the opera was an orchestral excerpt based on an earlier Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra. The frustration he experienced getting a production mounted of his first opera, Notre Dame, had stalled his compositional career. After nearly two decades as a performer, Schmidt shifted his energies in 1914 to composing and teaching at Vienna’s Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Mahler greatly admired his playing, and always wanted him to perform the cello solos in the operas he conducted. In an all-Schubert concert with the celebrated Rosé Quartet, Schmidt performed the cello part in the C-major String Quintet followed by the piano part in the “Trout” Quintet. He was praised for astonishing abilities on both instruments. ![]() Although he began his studies as a pianist, it was as a cellist that he first built his professional career. The distinguished English music critic Hans Keller described him as “the most complete musician” he had ever met. Schmidt’s artistic gifts were multifaceted. His four symphonies, two operas, organ and chamber music, and magnificent oratorio The Book with Seven Seals, are ever more often performed and recorded. Franz Schmidt, who played cello for ten years under Mahler’s direction at the Vienna Court Opera, may not have made the same claim, nor has he as yet enjoyed a comparable reassessment, but there are clear indications that his time is coming. Gustav Mahler famously predicted that “his time would come,” and it did with a vengeance. ![]() Written for the concert The Hunchback of Notre Dame, performed on Maat Carnegie Hall.
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