Day 317
13 November 2017:
Nielsen – Symphony No. 6 (1925)
As we approach the end
of the year, there will an increasing number of final symphonies, and today we
have the last symphony composed by Danish composer Carl Nielsen. After the
hugely popular fifth (see Day 256), Nielsen decided to produce something completely
different from its predecessors. The original idea was to strip everything back
to basics, to produce music that was idyllic and 'gliding more amiably', and
thus he initially entitled the work Sinfonia
semplice. Quite what happened to that concept, we may never know, but the
finished product turned out to be anything but simple and actually left its
audience rather bemused.
For all he intended this
to be a departure from his earlier works, the opening of the symphony is
readily identifiable Nielsen. It does take some undeniably strange turns
thereafter though, not least in the bizarre Humoreske
second movement, in which a trio – well, more of an argument really – for
triangle, glockenspiel, and side drum holds sway, while woodwind instruments
attempt to keep the music together and a slide trombone interjects disdainfully
from time to time. The contrast between this and the intense writing for
strings that follows in the third movement couldn't be more stark. The finale
is a theme and variations, in which the theme is stated on a solo bassoon, with
variations that range from sparsely orchestrated chamber groups, through an orchestral
waltz, a section for percussion alone reminiscent of Britten's Young Persons
Guide to the Orchestra, to a final light-hearted conclusion. The sixth symphony
is as rarely heard as the fifth symphony is ubiquitous, but it's certainly
never dull.
Day 318
14 November 2017:
Lennox Berkeley – Symphony No. 2 (1958)
I've been a fan of
Lennox Berkeley for as long as I can remember. His Serenade for Strings is fantastic, and, as a guitarist, I've been
familiar with his lovely Guitar Concerto
for quite some time. I fell slightly out of love with him when I decided to
perform his fiendish Theme and Variations
for Guitar, Op. 77 for a class test at University, but that was more down
to my own incompetence as a performer. Ironically, I got on far better with his
son Michael's Worry Beads a couple of
years earlier. Anyway, I digress. His symphonies have escaped me up until now,
and to be honest, the reviews I'd read of them didn't fill me with much hope.
The criticism most
frequently levelled at Lennox Berkeley is that he was a miniaturist. The
composer Hugh Wood referred to him as 'only a divertimento composer', and his
symphonies are about as large-scale as anything he wrote. This is the second of
four, premiered by the CBSO, as it happens during the brief period when Andrzej
Panufnik was their musical director. The ten-minute-long Lento would seem as if to set the tone for a work of grand scale,
but whenever it develops any kind of momentum or drama, Berkeley seems to rein
the music in, which can make for a frustrating listening experience. A brief
jaunty dance-like Scherzo is much
more in his comfort zone, and this is bookended by another Lento, one that is far more impressive than the one that opened the
symphony. The Allegro finale is
energetic enough, but feels like a bit of a lightweight ending, and just adds
support to the view that Lennox Berkeley just didn't do grandeur.
Day 319
15 November 2017:
Rosetti – Symphony in G min, A42 (1787)
Francesco Antonio
Rosetti: names don't come more Italian than that. So it comes as a surprise to
most, including me, to discover that he was in fact Bohemian, having been born
Franz Anton Rösler in Litoměřice, now part of the Czech Republic. If asked to
list composers of the classical period, Mozart and Haydn would trip off the
tongue fairly easily. After that, maybe Clementi, Boccherini, Bachs JC and CPE,
and then a bit of head-scratching. Rosetti's name probably wouldn't be
immediately forthcoming. He did, however, compose about 50 symphonies, very
much in the three-movement early-classical tradition.
This is probably the
best-known, and certainly most-frequently recorded, of the bunch. Remarkably,
this is the only surviving one in a minor key – although the catalogued A50 was listed as being in A minor, but
has been lost. It is a splendid little piece, and one that employs a broad
tonal range, especially in the first movement where the music passes through
several keys over its seven-minute duration. There is even an example of
bimodality at one point; highly advanced stuff for the 1780s. He’s always going
to struggle to find concert airtime against his Viennese counterparts, but
certainly worth hearing more of than we do at present.
Day 320
16 November 2017:
Panufnik – Symphony No. 10 (1988)
Another final
symphony, this time from Andrzej Panufnik. Not only was it his last – written
when he was 74 years old – but it was also his shortest symphony, and
represents something of an anomaly in that was only one of his symphonies to be
numbered rather than titled. The work was commissioned by his old friend Sir
Georg Solti for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s centenary. Panufnik completed
it quite quickly, however, and it was premiered in 1990 – the Chicago SO's 99th
year. The premiere was probably brought forward to ensure the first performance
preceded its inclusion in that year's Warsaw Autumn Festival, in which
Panufnik, following the fall of communism, felt able to end his voluntary
exile, and made a triumphant return to Poland for a series of concerts of his
music.
Having initially
formed the idea of writing something akin to a concerto for orchestra, Panufnik
decided instead to showcase their supreme sound quality, through different
instrument combinations. He was drawn back to familiar themes: three-note cells
and geometric forms. In contrast to the Sinfonia
della Speranza (see Day 285), however, Symphony
No. 10 is a tightly argued single-movement work of about 17 minutes’
duration. It represents a neat full stop to his symphonic life. Having made his
celebratory return to the land of his birth, the following year he received a
knighthood from his adoptive homeland. Sadly, by then he had been diagnosed
with inoperable cancer, and died just weeks after receiving it.
Day 321
17 November 2017:
Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 8 (1955)
I haven't made much of
a secret of my love of Ralph Vaughan Williams over the course of this year, but
I have to confess that when I started hoovering up recordings of his symphonies
back in the mid-1980s, this one left me a bit cold at first. It took me a while
to fully appreciate it, but the invention and orchestral colour on display in
this work is really quite something, especially given the composer's age when
he wrote it. RVW completed this when he was 83, showing that as his years
advanced, his powers were far from waning. Long gone was the folk-music
influenced early style, and instead there's an appetite for experimentation
where there would have been every justification for a degree of end-of-career
laurel-resting.
It's the shortest of
RVW's symphonies, and strangely the first to which he gave a number – the
previous seven having all been given either titles or simply a key designation.
The central movements are of particular interest, with a brief militaristic Scherzo scored only for wind instruments
followed by a gorgeous Cavatina for
strings alone. The finale unleashes 'all the 'phones and 'spiels known to the
composer', to use RVW’s words, in a percussion-driven Toccata that is so-far removed from The Lark Ascending it is scarcely recognisable as the work of the
same man. And the remarkable thing is that there was yet more to come from the
affable octogenarian!
Day 322
18 November 2017: CPE
Bach – Symphony in G major, Wq 182:1 (1773)
When I last featured
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, it was with one of his Wq 179 symphonies; a collection of nine known as the 'Berlin
Symphonies' (see Day 157). About ten years later, CPE Bach moved from Berlin to
Hamburg, where he succeeded his godfather, Telemann (from whom he also acquired
his middle name, Philipp) as Kapellmeister. While in Hamburg, Bach wrote a
major set of six string symphonies, which were not published in his lifetime, primarily
because they were commissioned by a Baron van Swieten, who intended them for
private use. Nevertheless, they became popular after his death, and are
considered important in his body of work, as the central group of a total of 18
symphonies that are known to have survived to the present day.
This is the first of
that set of six, and it was an appropriate choice for today, given that I'm
singing his Magnificat this evening
with Newcastle Bach Choir. It is short, as all symphonies of the time were, and
follows the standard three-movement design – fast-slow-fast – adopted from the
Baroque concerto. The thematic development is distinctly classical though, and
the emotionally charged passage in the middle of the finale seems to echo the Sturm und Drang style being explored at
the time by Haydn elsewhere.
Day 323
19 November 2017:
Mahler – Symphony No. 9 (1910)
Over the last 30 years
or more, my opinion on which of Mahler's symphonies is the greatest has tended
to vary. At one time or another I've held No. 1, 2, 4, 5 and 8 in the highest
regard. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it's this symphony I'd take
to my Mahler-only Desert Island. Having circumvented the so-called Curse of the
Ninth by designating Das Lied Von Der
Erde a symphony (see Day 288), Mahler then moved straight on to this work
and confronted the very real prospect of his imminent demise head on. It was to
be the last work he completed (he died while writing his tenth), and in the
finale, he seems to be composing his own death.
Apart from its vast
scale – performance time averages around the 80-minute mark – it's about as
conventional as Mahler symphonies get. It's purely instrumental, the orchestral
forces called for aren't especially large for the Late-Romantic era, and it has
a four-movement structure, albeit a non-standard one with the outer ones being
two huge slow movements. Where it leaves all of its peers behind, however, is
in the sheer intensity of its musical language. No less a judge than Alban Berg
described the first movement as 'the most heavenly thing Mahler has written'.
It has the feel of a long farewell, both to his own time on earth and to the
passing of the symphonic tradition to which he belonged. A trademark Scherzo follows, given the very specific
marking of Im Tempo eines gemächlichen
Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb (In the tempo of an easygoing
Ländler, somewhat heavy footed and very vigorous), although the main theme is
in fact a rhythmic transformation of a theme from the first movement. The pent-up
venom and anger is poured into the Rondo-Burleske
third movement, which is about as dissonant as anything Mahler ever wrote. With
all ire spent, the scene is set for the final movement, which I rarely manage
to get through dry-eyed. I've never heard anything that matches its searing
beauty and power, and the closing section, where every ounce of life force is
squeezed out until all that remains is silence, is at once heart-breaking and
life-affirming.