Franz Schmidt is increasingly being recognised as one of the great composers. His music covers symphonies, quartets, opera and oratorio. In all of these genres he proves himself a master of large-scale symphonic form and one of the most substantial lyric geniuses of all time. Born in Hungary in 1879, Schmidt spent most of his life in Austria (he died in Vienna in 1939) where his importance was universally agreed; now his towering stature is also acknowledged further afield. In this first of a three-volume survey of Schmidt's music, Harold Truscott, the outstanding authority on Schmidt in the...