Maximum Reger - opening of documentary about Max Reger

Part of the award-winning 6xDVD boxed set 'Maximum Reger', available to buy at fuguestatefilm... or to stream at: watch.showandt...
watch.showandt...
watch.showandt...
Part of the award-winning 6xDVD boxed set 'Maximum Reger', available to buy at fuguestatefilm...
Maximum Reger won 'Best DVD' in the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Awards and was reviewed in BBC Music Magazine as "ambitious and superbly executed... A hugely rewarding achievement that should persuade us all to revisit Max Reger's place in music history." The boxed set was Editor's Choice in Gramophone Magazine, in which Rob Cowan wrote: "Maximum Reger is for me an answer to a prayer."
This is the opening section of first of three feature length documentaries found in massive 6-DVD boxed set "Maximum Reger" that explore the music of German composer Max Reger (1873 - 1916). The boxed set also contains more than 700 minutes of filmed performances of Reger's best music (organ, piano, instrumental, chamber and orchestral) by the finest musicians and ensembles .

[@teunvandesteeg7836]

I was about 16 or 17 years old and was a student at the conservatory and heard PSALM 100 of M. Reger for the first time. Now I am over 60 but I still can remember the shock I felt. So hugely fascinated I was and still am by this composer. Since that time I played a lot of his organ pieces and listen frequently to his amazing music.

[@sbareg]

Same story, except I still didn't have the priviledge to hear this opus live (not many performances here in France 😔) I love many composers, but I have a real fascination for this one and keep coming back to him

[@monsieurgrigny]

Reger's music remains some exotic late flowering of his intense engagement with Bach in whom he was grounded. His Hiller Variations for orchestra made a huge impact on me when Colin Davis brought them to London with the Staatskapelle, Dresden but they're rarely programmed. Inexplicably. Like the Mozart Variations. And what about the a magnificent Variations and Fugue on a theme by Bach for piano? When did you last hear those in a recital programme? Jonathan Powell included them imaginatively in a programme with the Hammerklavier as did Andras Schiff in a live recording from the Concertgebouw with another imaginative coupling - the Brahms Handel Variations. But their outings are rare. Reger needs his champions.

[@ullrichherz7053]

I highly recommend this marvelous DVD-Box 'Maximum Reger' to every lover of Reger's music and to all open minded persons, who like to expand their musical experience. They'll be greatly rewarded.

[@lorenzley1324]

Yes, Max Reger was a great composer. As an organist, I've played very much the Reger organ music in my concerts. His music is crucial.

[@ullrichherz7053]

Thanks for uploading this fine video! A few months ago I finished reading the great Reger biography of Dr. Susanne Popp. Now this served as a fine overall view.

[@r.i.p.volodya]

I'm only now at 52 starting to come to terms with Reger's music. I find it hard to assimilate and requires study but is rewarding.

[@ziegunerweiser]

The most under rated composer I can think of

[@michaelwisse9284]

We don't kwon all composers and we never will but I do agree that he was very talented. Like Bach he could write in many styles. He knew the musical tradition and mastered it. He was traditional and modern as well. One could say a reïncarnation of Bach.

[@tharkun21280]

I whole-heartedly agree. His posthumous reception has been unkind and unfair, in my opinion. I think it was Carl Dahlhaus (?) who wrote Max Reger as an unexportable commodity from Germany. Sigh.

[@ullrichherz7053]

@@tharkun21280 It was none less than Yehudi Menuhin who made this statement. He admired Reger greatly but did not love his music. In the same retrospective letter he added: "It is like coming to a library filled with Kant and Hegel books, harbouring the awkward feeling, never becoming an accomplished, educated person unless having read them all and written an thorough expertise on them." (The poor translation is mine) Carl Dahlhaus wrote in 1973 in a similar way. "Reger's music leaves the impression on the listener, having understood nothing at all"

[@TheOneAndOnlyZelenkaGuru]

Well then you must know of the Czech Bach, Jan Dismas Zelenka - Bach revered him as a master of counterpoint second only to himself. My channel is dedicated to Zelenka, autograph score-videos, manuscript copies and recordings.

[@luigipati3815]

critics are idiots, the more so for their failure to recognize the talents of such uncommon individuals, such as Reger. More often than not, their 'critiques' are just a way to display their vanity and need for attention. I remember reading about Reger reading such a 'review', and him writing to the reviewer : 'I have your review before me! Now it will be behind me!'. As Schopenhauer wrote: 'It is the way of mediocre people to say that you are no better than them. For one cannot see in another what is lacking in himself.' I want to buy these dvds. The story of the great composers is always better than Netflix! Incredible history! Thank you!

[@jrubin1971]

One of my all time favorites! I have played a few organ works (those that I can!) and the piano sonatina in e minor - incredibly emotional and deep!

[@bobh5087]

I believe that Max Reger's music -- the final flowering of the romantic ideal in music -- is so oceanic, vast, incomprehensible, that it's like the formidable prospect of scaling Mount Everest; with little hope of attaining the summit. The richness and variety -- not to mention the technical difficulty -- of his voluminous musical output is staggering to contemplate. And yet, for those who take up the challenge -- whether organist, singer, orchestra member, etc. -- there is some unfathomable *reward* inherent in the endeavor. Even his simplest melody somehow spans the skies, and enters into that deep place of the soul... a place we recognize as at once fully human and fully transcendent. We can only wonder what greater, and more complexly beautiful, expressions would have come from his pen had he lived to 80... or beyond. But what we *do have* is *more than enough.* Like JS Bach, his Name should be "Ozean," rather than "Brook."

[@ullrichherz7053]

I highly appreciate your well thought remarks about this grand composer and hopefully others might comply too.

[@bobh5087]

@@ullrichherz7053 Thanks for your kind remarks. I've long thought that Reger's magnificent music is under-appreciated and too seldom performed.

[@SpaghettiToaster]

The final flowering? Romanticism stil flowered 40 years after Reger died.

[@annakimborahpa]

Whenever I attempt to scale any side of Reger's musical Mount Everest, I experience the sensation of being swallowed up in an aural avalanche.

[@bernamej]

Thank you all for your marvellous comments. These giants are my reason to live.

[@59piano]

This looks GREAT, just great.

[@alancordwell9759]

59piano doesn't it just!

[@irabraus865]

Perhaps MR is the most MISUNDERSTOOD composer of the last 200 years.

[@luigipati3815]

got the set, amazing stuff! recommended to ANY musician or lover of music. It is always humbling to learn about these great masters.

[@Igneous01]

Reger, Godowsky, and Schnittke. Lost giants that deserve a revival!

[@Guitareben]

Looks amazing!

[@MrNicks-gn8jc]

You had me when you talked about the Op. 59 in D Minor for organ....you earned my respect with a SHOCKING BUT HONORABLE inclusion of Zugabe Wayne Marshall

[@monsieurgrigny]

Great to see Wayne!

[@bernamej]

Reger, Schmidt and Joseph Marx diserve to be alongside side the greatest of the greatest.

[@billraty14]

5:53 With all the *massive* registration "advance* pistons (with the '>' symbol) on the keyboard jams he still needs a registration assistant!?

[@yuehchopin]

Ein wirklich Großer Geist ist Maestro Reger

[@neilsaunders9309]

Reger was certainly a giant, and he deserves the giant treatment he seems to have received in this mammoth set of DVDs. We shall not return to anything like musical sanity until his output is properly understood and appreciated. But was he the Last Giant? I can see that Second-To-Last Giant doesn't have quite the same ring to it, and anything that furthers Reger's cause has to be applauded, but surely the Last Giant was his very slightly younger contemporary, the Austrian (or, to be more precise, Austro-Hungarian) composer and virtuoso pianist, cellist and organist, Franz Schmidt? The similarities between Reger and Schmidt have been exaggerated, and their deep differences overlooked (or not noticed) by superficial commentators, but both these great masters urgently need to be rescued from a neglect that neither deserved and recognised as the towering figures that they are.

[@SpaghettiToaster]

And why would Schmidt be the last? Busoni's style wasn't too different from Reger's and he lived around the same time. And if we're not talking about style but just giants of counterpoint in general, we have Joseph Marx, Leopold Godowsky and of course Nikolai Medtner and Sergei Rachmaninoff. All except Busoni and Godowsky lived after Schmidt.

[@TheMikeOrganist]

@@SpaghettiToaster Yes, that is true. But, as Prof. Bernhard Haas said in this clip, and myself after writing a scientific paper on the music of Max Reger can truely agree: Reger was the first composer (before Messiaen, Schönberg, Strauss and Schmidt) to really break threw the system of tonality (some chords can only be deciphered with techniques that were evolved years after Reger composing his pieces). Best example, obviously, op. 57 (written in 1901!!) but also op. 90, op. 73, op. 81 and op. 101, which were revolutionary in terms of harmonic progression and irregular rhythm. Only Schönberg, with his atonal music and the development of the 12-tone-scale, was the first to surpass Reger in ~1905, where music onwards basically became sound experimentation and nothing more. In this sence Reger can be called "the last giant in music". It's questionable, if composers like Franz Schmidt, Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Louis Vierne or Joseph Marx can be called "the last giants", since they were "out of date" in terms of progression of music history in their times. Sure, Schmidt and Karg-Elert developed a tonality-breaking style similar to Reger's, but that happened 20 years later. And Joseph Marx even met Reger at a concert in Graz (Austria), from which he was really influenced by. So, I personally like all of the mentioned composers, Schmidt and Karg-Elert with their very expressive organ works, Marx with his wonderful Autumn-symphony, but in terms of music history I would say, that Reger was "the last giant" of "normal, tonal" music, since he was the first composer, who was dethroned by a modern composer on the top of the Avantgarde.

[@SpaghettiToaster]

@@TheMikeOrganist That's a very peculiar and in ny opinion rsther arbitrary way of looking at things. I don't see how employing a more chromatic style makes a composer any more of a giant than any other. Furthermore, I don't see how reger was "dethroned" by anyone. The whole emphasis lends an in my opinion completely undue importance to the second Viennese school, which is just another style of music, no more no less. You might as well call Beethoven "the first giant" because he "dethroned" the composers of the Mannheim school by employing some of their techniques in his first piano sonata. Sounds arbitrary, doesn't it? As to Reger supposedly being the first composer to write "atonal" music, people like to say that about anyone from Scriabin to Mahler to Wagner all the way back to Couperin and Bach. I disagree on all counts, and furthermore, it is a meaningless debate anyway. Most self-professed atonal music isn't even truly so, such as a lot of Schoenberg's own works, and if it is - so what? It never mattered in the first place. All that matters is musical quality. And there is certainly no shortage of low-quality atonal music. Of course Reger influenced Schoenberg's style through his approach to chromatic harmony and voice leading, however, thst hardly makes his music atonal. He just liked to subsume strong harmonic progressions to counterpuntal voice leading. But just because his harmonic progressions are weak in a diatonic sense, he never makes a conscious effort to specifically avoid the impression of key centres, which is possibly the only workable definition of atonality I can come up with. In his own book on modulation, Reger clearly states his procedures in tonal terms, even providing Roman numeral analyses for all his modulation techniques spelled out in the home and target keys. It is clear that he conceived of his music in this way, no matter how devoid of strong resolutions or firm key centers the results may have ended up in. Reger's music is great for its own sake, not because it happens to have inspired another composer's style whose methods eventually came to be popular in mainstream academia for a few decades. To me, none of that changes the sound of his music and hence has no relevance. The same is true for all the other wonderful composers mentioned, whose music was never by any means outdated - how could it if it still sounds great in 2021? If coexisting with music in a different style that happens to have recently become dominant among certain cultural circles is to be outdated, then almost all music ever written must surely have been outdated. The very same notions were used to criticize Bach when he was writing the Art of Fugue in a time when the Gallant style was the hot new thing. Does this diminish the value or quality of the Art of a Fugue in any way or make Bach's music outdated? I don't think so. And this is not even to speak of the countless innovations each of the mentioned composers has made that just happen to be more subtle and require a greater degree of familiarity and knowledge to recognize and interpret than the most coarse observation of their respective harmonic tendencies and respective crude categorization as "tonal" or "atonal". An entire body of literature could be dedicated to Marx' orchestration and intertextual cyclicity, Medtner's and Rachmaninoffs handling of sonata form and countless more such elements, each of which are arguably a world more important than the mere degree to which a composer makes use of diatonic progressions. Neither does Reger's music require such mental acrobatics to justify itself. It stands on its own merit.

[@PhilipDaniel]

@@TheMikeOrganist Karg-Elert composed much of his most radical music (even exploring atonality, as in the opus 103 and 104 harmonium pieces) prior to the First World War.

[@classicallpvault]

@@SpaghettiToaster Joseph Marx was an exceptionally gifted composer in terms of musical ideas and making use of effective voice leading, harmonisation, etc. He had one weak spot: as an orchestrator he's not particularly good, and while other composers who were not very good orchestrators, like Schumann and Chopin, they cemented their reputation with lots of high quality solo piano music, Marx did not. Actually his main strength was chamber music, he was a highly gifted composer of string quartets for example. However, the main reason for Marx being ignored is the baseless accusation that he was a national socialist (despite mountains of evidence of the contrary). Rachmaninoff was a great composer and is rightfully highly regarded and many of his works part of the standard repertoire or even genre-defining (like the 2nd and 3rd piano concertos) but he too had a weakness: a tendency for showmanship and occasional excesses in banality similar to Tchaikovsky. Franz Schmidt was an excellent orchestrator and his works never degrade into showpieces and his volume of works is relatively small but all of it is of the highest quality, and although conservative in many ways, also highly individualistic and original. Also, like Marx, his reputation unjustly suffers from false accusations of national socialist sympathies, mostly because an unfinished cantata he started was finished by others and used as a showpiece for Teutonical musical culture directly linked to the sort of blood and soil ideology the NSDAP promoted, but he had nothing to do with this nor is there ANY evidence that he ever supported national socialism. It's the same with Richard Strauss but he actually lived to be able and defend himself after the war and saved his reputation, something which Schmidt was unable to do because he died before WW2 broke out.

[@kirillkondrashin6204]

Reger was a driven genius sick man like Schumann.

[@philipp8562]

Theses are my two favourite composers!

[@classicallpvault]

Not like Schumann. Schumann was actually insane, wether this was from some neurodegenerative illness or a brain tumour or mercury poisoning or syphilis, or a combination of the latter 2, isn't entirely certain, but he was delusional and this became progressively worse to the point of him fearing for his own family's safety, which compelled him to try and kill himself. Reger had emotional problems and was an alcoholic with an unhealthy apetite for fine food, but he wasn't insane.

[@pavelpestel5321]

What Reger's work is he playing on 3:50 ? He didn't name it, but it sounds beautiful!

[@sbareg]

It is his Serenade for orchestra op.95 ^^

[@sbareg]

Many recordings available on KZbin ;)

[@robertgift]

Wonderful! Should never have attempted to portray the Maxnificent Fantasy and Fugue on the piano. Too overwhelming for a _mere_ piano. Organist Brian Runnett was killed in a car crash in 1970 whilst returning from an organ recital he had given in Westminster Abbey.

[@ssbphotography]

apologies for my impatience but let us hear about Rheinberger too!

[@jaredharris1940]

He's certainly not afraid of that mechanism!

[@fortunatomartino8549]

What is all the music played here

[@AlexSomething-l9p]

What's the name of the piece in the beginning?

[@twillert-organ-projects]

Reger was a giant but not the last giant.

[@TheMikeOrganist]

Well, in Terms of "classical" and tonal style of writing music, in my opinion he was....

[@ullrichherz7053]

This 'giant'-statement was uttered by Hindemith, who died in 1963 and thus covers only a few decades after Reger's death!

[@yamato-yosoroku-klausketeer]

来日するペトレンコ、BPhが取り上げるらしい!!!! ちょっと興味が湧いたマックス・レーガー というか「マキシマム」レーガーなのか…。 マックスじゃなくてマキシマム!!!!!!!!!!!! (ホルモンじゃねぇけどホルモン級の作曲家らしい…意味不明か!?) 同時代に持て囃されたのに不思議なことに消えていく作曲家と残る作曲家がいるんだよね 言葉はさっぱりわからんがペトレンコとBPhが取り上げるなら知られざるすごい作曲家なのかなあ…と (たいして考えてないくけど…面白かったら良いなあ!!)

[@youtubesketches110]

Critic Paul Rosenfeld misunderstood Reger.

[@annakimborahpa]

If you like perpetual modulation, rapid harmonic rhythm and ambiguous tonal centers, then the music of Max Reger is for you for it is the sound of uncertainty in fixed pitch. However, Max may have heard his music differently from us due to the fact that his metabolism was significantly altered by his compulsive smoking, drinking and eating which probably contributed to his early death. What we hear as rapidly changing in the music, he may have perceived in slow motion because the excessive stimulation of his senses most likely produced heightened brain waves in response to musical sound. For example, he may have perceived a single chord lasting a few seconds the same way most people perceive a musical phrase lasting tens of seconds. One way to test this theory would be to perform/listen to his music at half-speed to see whether it is more understandable. Charlie Parker, the incomparable be-bop jazz saxophonist, was recently revealed to have been high on opioid drugs for most of his adult life, and this was probably a factor in his perception of time, giving him an unusual ability to invent on the spot rapid improvisatory passages over quick moving chord changes. Like Reger, Parker also died fairly young from body organ failure.

[@SpaghettiToaster]

Opioids slow down your metabolism. They're downers. They don't heighten shit.

[@annakimborahpa]

From NY Post article 'Charlie Parker's heroin addiction helped make him a genius' by Larry Getlen, Feb. 5, 2017: "Saxophonist Charlie 'Bird' Parker ... tried heroin for the first time at 15. At the same time, Parker worked tirelessly on his craft, practicing the saxophone day and night often fueled by Benezedrine. Parker was a speed and heroin user from then until the end of his life." nypost.com/2017/02/05/charlie-parkers-heroin-addiction-helped-make-him-a-genius/

[@SpaghettiToaster]

So? He just happened to become addicted to stimulants at the same time as heroin. That doesn't make heroin any less of a downer.

[@annakimborahpa]

I was offering a clarification and am suggesting that his continuous ingestion of uppers and downers so impacted his body that it significantly affected his perception of time, similar to Reger's continuous ingestion of food, alcohol and tobacco.

[@maxreger100]

@@annakimborahpa I think the fact that you are even TRYING to explain Reger is all to the good. I might suggest that Reger's music is intellectually stimulating and its beauty is hard to appreciate if you are not so stimulated. It's like reading Hawking or Sacks--difficult if you don't commit. Those of us lucky enough to "get" Reger are indeed the fortunate ones. Personally I don't believe his tempi factor into a better understanding.

[@kghj6937]

4:52 "And, it is, indeed; it even looks like an infernal," Reger, another case of a tortured/emo genius?

[@classicallpvault]

@elenabressan8770 We have every reason to believe he wasn't insane. Just emotionally unstable. He overcame a bout of depression in his early 20s without professional help, and maintained a highly stressful and physically demanding work schedule for many, many years. We're not talking about a delusional paranoiac like Schumann. I'd personally never call depression 'insanity' because I know from experience that depression can be caused by a perfectly rational, but gloomy, outlook on life. Think in terms of losing a loved one to suicide or to some totally freak health problem that comes out of the blue - this can send even the most sane person into months of depressive moods.

[@Lircking]

idk guys, theres a reason reger is forgotten

[@rudigerk]

He is not forgotten really. I listen to his Works daily and he is my favorite Composer besides J.S.Bach. His Organ Music belongs to the Standard Canon.

[@LesterBrunt]

Presenter: He was indeed the last giant in music Arvo Part: Am I a joke to you?

[@ullrichherz7053]

Don't forget the historical context, please! This statement by Hindemith who died 1963 can logically not embrace the time after.

[@LesterBrunt]

@@ullrichherz7053 But the voice over could.

[@scriabinismydog2439]

Tbh I don't find Part to be that great...

[@LesterBrunt]

@@scriabinismydog2439 what... have you heard Cecilia Vergina Romana?

[@lukemitchell415]

First

[@zapatasantos59]

Ugly?