WeGA, Rezeptionsdokumente, Digitale Edition
author: Anonymus
source date: Juli 1829
language: en
availability: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

- 1. Hilarité, Polacca Brillante, composée par C. M. von Weber. (Wessel and Stodart, Frith Street.)
- [...]

We have never estimated the piano-forte compositions of Weber so highly as his vocal and orchestral works. In the former his genius seems painfully bounded, – it appears to want the means of developement, and flies with unceasing activity to all parts of the instrument, as if endeavouring to escape from so circumscribed a field into one of ampler dimensions. His addiction also to unequal, jerking notes, – to the dotted semiquaver alternately with the demisemiquaver – so apparent in all he has written for the pianoforte, together with his hurried passages of triplets, betray something like impatience; and whatever may have been the feeling that produced such results, they certainly do not excite the most agreeable emotions in the majority of well-judging hearers. This opinion is strengthened by the present Polacca (in e) which exhibits the peculiarities we have mentioned; though the author’s genius always will display itself in some shape or other, and often shines forth in the work before us, particularly in the cantabile, pages 2 and 3[^1], which is like a tranquil, beautiful episode, in the midst of a hurried, vehement oration.

[^1: Entspricht T. 31–43]

[...]

The [...] compositions are only adapted to superior performers; they are full of difficulties, and [...] do not possess attraction enough to urge the less advanced player to any extraordinary exertions.