Days 64 – 67

Day 64

5 March 2017: Myaskovsky – Symphony No. 10 (1927)

Nikolai Myaskovsky wrote an incredible 27 symphonies, so I feel a bit mean in only choosing one of them to focus on this year. This is arguably his best, however, and the first in which he condensed the traditional four-movement symphonic structure down to a single-movement work – following the precedent set by Sibelius in his seventh symphony three years earlier. As a consequence, it comes in at under 20 minutes in length, but, as he himself described it to Prokofiev, it is 'as massive as if it were made of iron'.

Like Shostakovich, Myaskovsky would fall foul of the Soviet authorities in later life. This dates from just before Stalinism really kicked in, however, and as a result is quite uncompromising in it musical language. The challenges it posed were too much for the communist-ideal, conductorless orchestra for which it was written, and its first performance was a disaster. Later performances were more successful, thankfully. It is influenced by Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman, and is broadly programmatic without attempting to precisely tell the story. The ferocious power of the flood that drowns the main protagonist of the poem is conveyed by the large, brass-heavy orchestra for which it is scored. Massive, yet concise – Myaskovsky pulls off quite a trick in the piece.

Day 65

6 March 2017: Sibelius – Symphony No. 1 (1900)

Seven years after his Kullervo Symphony, Jean Sibelius wrote his first numbered symphony, which is every bit as conventional as its predecessor wasn't. Although completed in 1899, it was almost immediately revised and the version we know today dates from 1900. Because Sibelius was still alive, although not composing, in 1957 I often find it hard to reconcile that a large proportion of Sibelius's work, including this symphony, dates from the 19th century. Although there are slight echoes of Tchaikovsky in this piece, it seems otherwise almost bereft of influence, which somehow makes it feel timeless.

The symphony contains some wonderful melodic writing, especially in the first movement, and while it doesn't perhaps maintain its focus throughout, the way his later symphonies do, it's still a thoroughly enjoyable listen. This work helped make Sibelius's name abroad, particularly in Britain and America, yet it would probably be very few people's favourite Sibelius symphony. Perhaps it suffered for being eclipsed somewhat by the monumental second symphony that followed it.

Day 66

7 March 2017: Nielsen – Symphony No. 2, 'The Four Temperaments' (1902)

Staying in Scandinavia, we hop across the Baltic to Denmark for Carl Nielsen's second symphony. Written just two years after Sibelius's first, Nielsen's work didn't achieve the same instant popularity as that of his Finnish contemporary. In fact, it was actually quite poorly received at its first few performances. The title comes from the fact that each of the four movements represents one of the four 'humours' of Greco-Roman medicine. The first movement is Choleric, the second Phlegmatic, the third Melancholic, and the fourth Sanguine.

The melancholy of the third movement is profound enough, and the optimistic finale is suitably sanguine, but the characteristics are otherwise not obvious to the casual listener, certainly not in the first two movements anyway. It's probably best to pay no attention to them, and accept this as a fine late-Romantic symphony from a composer who was still, at the time, influenced by the likes of Brahms and Dvorak, but gradually finding his own voice.

Day 67

8 March 2017: Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 4, 'Chiaroscuro' (1984)

It's only right that I feature a female composer on International Women's Day, and this symphony by Gloria Coates is a suitably brilliant work to mark it with. Coates was born in Wisconsin, but has lived in Munich for almost 50 years now. Her music makes prominent use of microtones and glissandi – she uses glissandi a lot – alongside standard tuning to create a tonal instability that is quite unlike anything else I've heard. Many other composers, notably Penderecki and Xenakis, have employed these techniques, but not in stark juxtaposition with conventional methods.

She has written 16 symphonies to date, and her fourth is probably the most striking. Chiaroscuro, the oil painting technique of contrasted light and shadow, is played upon here with tonal music offset against disorientating writing elsewhere in the orchestra. The first movement, Illumination, is absolutely mind-blowing. It features Purcell's famous lament from Dido and Aeneas, but the tune is constantly being lost in a swirling and disorientating fog of glissandi. It's like hearing something familiar on a faint, long wave radio signal that keeps drifting in and out of tune, occasionally lost in the static. This a genuine contemporary masterpiece.

Days 60 – 63

Day 60

1 March 2017: Rubbra – Symphony No. 2 (1937)

Having been something of a late starter as a symphonist, writing his first at the age of 35, Edmund Rubbra produced his second symphony within a year of its predecessor. His first four symphonies were composed in a six-year period, and are considered to be connected – each apparently a reaction to the previous one. This work is a huge exercise in counterpoint and interweaving melodic lines: something that always fascinated Rubbra. There are no chords as such, other than those that occur as a result of the orchestral lines coinciding at any point in time, and the tonality is underpinned by pedal basses. 

Rubbra's undoubted skill as a composer is laid bare for all to see in this symphony, and it was this that led him to be revered in his own lifetime. As an indication of the esteem in which he, and this work in particular, was held, the great conductor Sir Adrian Boult chose this symphony as one of his Desert Island Discs when he appeared on the show in 1979 to mark his 90th birthday. That it should now be virtually unknown is a travesty, and once again I find myself wondering how a composer can drop off the radar so quickly after his death. 

Day 61

2 March 2017: Shostakovich – Symphony No. 5 (1937)

Written in the same year as Rubbra's second symphony, featured yesterday, Dmitri Shostakovich's fifth symphony is a very different beast. This is one of the giants of the symphonic repertoire, not just for its music, which is truly magnificent, but also for its historic and cultural significance. As mentioned on 6 February when I featured it, Shostakovich was forced to withdraw his fourth symphony in the face of mounting criticism from the Stalinist regime. His response was this symphony, referred to in an article allegedly written by Shostakovich a few days before the premiere as 'a Soviet artist’s creative response to justified criticism'.

It is an extraordinary achievement. With the very real threat of being sent to a Gulag labour camp hanging over him, Shostakovich could have played safe and written some ultra-patriotic hymn in praise of Socialism. Instead he changed very little. The themes are more tonal, the piece as a whole avoids the extreme dissonance of the fourth, and the triumphal ending provides an unmistakable tone of optimism. It is, however, a 'response' on the composer's terms, which satisfied both the ruling party and his own sense of integrity. The positive ending can be taken two ways: it is, superficially, a rejoicing climax, but a quote attributed to Shostakovich is more telling – 'The rejoicing is forced ... it's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing", and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing"'. It received a 30-minute ovation at its first performance, and is rightly considered one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century.

Day 62

3 March 2017: Haydn – Symphony No. 45, 'Farewell' (1772)

Having written 104 symphonies, it's a small blessing that Josef Haydn chose to give many of them nicknames, drawing attention to their USP, as it were. Number 45 is probably the outstanding example, thanks to an ingenious idea that turns a regular classical period symphony into a piece of music theatre. During an extended coda appended to the end of the finale, the members of the orchestra are instructed to leave the stage and snuff out the candle on their music stand – or, nowadays, switch of their desk light. I doubt modern Health & Safety regulations would sanction a stage full of candles in such close proximity to paper scores. The order of departure is specified in the score – first oboe, second horn, bassoon, second oboe etc. – until at the end only two violins remain.

The idea apparently came during a stay at Haydn's patron Prince Nikolaus Esterházy's summer palace, during which the musicians had been required to stay longer than they'd expected. With the orchestra pleading to return to their families, Haydn decided to convey this message to the Prince via the symphony. Gimmicks aside, it is a very fine work, and like its predecessor the Trauer symphony, featured on 4 February, it dates from Haydn's Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) period. In some ways, having such a light-hearted ending to an otherwise quite serious symphony is a tiny bit incongruous. Would it be quite so well-known without it, however?

Day 63

4 March 2017: Britten – Sinfonia da Requiem (1940)

Sinfonia da Requiem is the most conventional of Benjamin Britten's four symphonies, and certainly the most frequently performed. It also helped make Britten's name as one of the country's leading composers as it led directly to the commissioning of his opera Peter Grimes. It did, however, have a quite inauspicious genesis. The Japanese government commissioned the work to celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of the Empire of Japan. The details of the commission were late in arriving, leaving Britten with little choice but to submit the piece he was working on at the time. When the Japanese received it, they took exception to the symphony's use of movement titles taken from Christian liturgy, and felt the work was too gloomy for a celebratory occasion. Britten was accused by the brother of the Japanese prime minister of 'insulting a friendly power'.

Although Britten, with the help of his friend WH Auden, replied in carefully worded terms to defend his work, Japan soon afterwards became an enemy power following the attack on Pearl Harbour. The diplomatic incident the work nearly caused has long been consigned to history and the symphony is now well-established. It's a great piece, and one of my personal favourites. It also must have been a favourite of the 70s rock band ELO, who used the first movement as an intro to their Out Of The Blue tour shows in 1978, accompanying their impressive-for-the-time spaceship stage taking off and landing. I find the passage of darkness to light, from the ominous rising figure that opens the work to the soaring strings in the major key ending, to be genuinely uplifting.

Days 57 – 59

Day 57

26 February 2017: Gould – Symphony No. 4 "West Point" (1952)

As has already been demonstrated by Widor's Organ Symphony No. 5, or Adams's Chamber Symphony, there is no restriction on the forces for which a symphony can be written. American composer Morton Gould took a different approach again when it came to composing his fourth symphony, choosing to employ a concert band. The piece was written for the 150th anniversary of the West Point US Military Academy, to be performed by the Academy band, and military marches form the backbone of the piece. 

Although the second movement is entitled 'Marches', the first movement – 'Epitaphs' – features an extraordinary slow-building march theme, and uses a 'marching machine' This is an unusual percussion instrument consisting of a frame containing wooden blocks connected by strings which produces a fairly authentic sound of a marching troop. It's certainly a unique sonority, and with some wonderful wind writing going on around it, the effect is stunning. Needless to say I'd never heard this symphony before today, but I did rather enjoy it.

Day 58

27 February 2017: Bizet – Symphony No. 1 in C major (1855)

Georges Bizet is, of course, best-known for his hit opera Carmen. Unfortunately, he died in the year it was first performed at the age of just 36. In common with other composers who died in their 30s, such as Mozart, Mendelssohn and Schubert, he happened to be a child prodigy so he did manage to produce a reasonable body of work in his short life. One of the first of which is this symphony, written when he was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris.

Bizet was just 17 when he wrote this. It was a student assignment, and consequently something he himself regarded as juvenilia. Bizet never heard the work performed in his lifetime, and he actually re-used some of its material in later pieces. The symphony was eventually rediscovered in 1933, over 50 years after his death, and given its first public performance by the great Felix Weingartner. Bizet appears to have been paying a tribute to his teacher, the composer Charles Gounod, in the work and even quotes from Gounod's own Symphony in D (a piece I'll be featuring later in the year). The Symphony in C was instantly recognised as a masterpiece and is now a concert staple, but the person most likely to be surprised by the success it has gone on to achieve would be Bizet himself.

Day 59

28 February 2017: Copland – Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924)

Aaron Copland first orchestral score was the culmination of his three years' study with the famed composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. The idea of a work for organ and orchestra was apparently the idea of the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, who conducted the first performance with Boulanger herself playing the organ. Despite Copland's reservations over writing for unfamiliar forces, the work was a success. Copland did later re-score the piece, removing the organ and replacing it with brass and saxophone and calling it Symphony No. 1, but I've always loved the sound of an organ so that's the version I'm going with.

As with any symphony that features a solo instrument, the question arises over whether it is in fact a concerto. The answer is probably as banal as saying that isn't because Copland called it a symphony, but the organ doesn't dominate the piece the way it would in a concerto and the solo passages aren't especially virtuosic. In fact, its role in the jazz-influenced second movement is really to keep a constant rhythm going throughout. The hugely impressive third movement is where Copland really comes to the fore, and there are clear echoes of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in the ostinati, dissonances and sharp contrasts of dynamics that run through it. This symphony made Copland’s name as a composer, and rightly so.

Days 54 – 56

Day 54

23 February 2017: Beach – Symphony in E Minor, 'Gaelic Symphony' (1896)
Amy Beach's Symphony in E Minor is a quite extraordinary document. Nineteenth-century symphonies by American composers are rare enough things, so for one written by that even rarer thing, a female American composer, to have stood the test of time is truly remarkable. In common with her countryman Charles Ives, whose own first symphony didn't materialise until about six years after this, Beach drew inspiration from Dvořák. The Czech composer moved to the USA in 1892, and his influence on American music was quite substantial. And while Dvořák drew on Native American and African-American spirituals for thematic material for his New World Symphony, Beach looked to the other side of the Atlantic and made use of folk melodies from England, Ireland and Scotland – hence the title Gaelic Symphony.

Its opening is very unusual with a swirling, disorientating chromatic passage fading in as if from nowhere, which seems to anticipate similar writing by Sibelius in Tapiola about 30 years later. Eventually it settles down into a lusciously orchestrated work, typical of the period. The folk melodies are used to exquisite effect in the beautifully melodic third movement, while the fourth movement sounds folk-influenced but is in fact all Beach. Ultimately, it is purely academic distinction to establish whether the themes are borrowed or Beach's own, as the symphony is assuredly written and clearly the product of a brilliant mind.

Day 55

24 February 2017: Dvořák – Symphony No. 2 (1865)
It's quite appropriate that we should feature Antonin Dvořák the day after Amy Beach's Gaelic Symphony, which was heavily influenced by the Czech – although more likely his later symphonies. This one would have escaped most people's attention at the time, having passed from the composer's possession almost immediately. To lose one symphony in a year is unfortunate; to lose two looks like carelessness – as Oscar Wilde might have said to Antonin Dvořák in 1865. Having already recounted (on Day 16) how Dvořák's submitted his first symphony for a competition and then never saw it again, it is incredible that, a few months later, Dvořák should write a second symphony, only to then see it kept by a friend who retained it as security having lent Dvořák money to have the score bound. Thankfully, unlike his first, Dvořák was eventually reunited with this symphony, although it didn't receive its first performance until over 20 years later.

Rather like the first, this is a huge sprawling work that paid no attention to anything that might resemble form. The harmonic language is recognisably Dvořák, but it does have a stream of consciousness feel about it, and could safely lose about 10 of its 50 minutes' duration. The Poco adagio second movement has a delicate charm to it and is certainly the redeeming feature of the symphony. On the whole though, it is not among Dvořák's greatest works.

Day 56

25 February 2017: Walton – Symphony No. 1 (1935)
I first encountered William Walton's barnstorming first symphony when my university orchestra played it back in 1990. I'd been in the choir for the first half (Howells' Hymnus Paradisi – equally wonderful) so was able to sit in the audience after the interval. With the brilliant Stephen Banfield conducting, it was an absolutely blistering performance, and the Stoke Evening Sentinel reviewed it with the headline 'Not pretty, but powerful!' It has remained one of my favourite symphonies ever since.

With Belshazzar's Feast already under his belt, Walton was well established at the forefront of British music by the mid-1930s. He struggled with this symphony though, and after taking two years to write the first three movements he decided to allow it to be performed three times in that incomplete state in 1933-34. When the final movement completed the work the following year, it was ecstatically received and continues to be revered to this day. Walton acknowledged the influence of Sibelius in the piece, especially in the first movement with its driving rhythms over long pedal basses. It's searingly brilliant symphony, and I was pleased to have an excuse to listen to it today.

Days 51 – 53

Day 51

20 February 2017: Beethoven – Symphony No. 2 (1802)
With Ludwig van Beethoven, sometimes it is hard to reconcile the music with the man. He was capable of writing the most beautiful and spiritually uplifting music at times when he was in the darkest of despair. His second symphony is a typical case in point. He wrote this majestic symphony during his stay at Heiligenstadt in the outskirts of Vienna, at a time when he was coming to terms with his increasing deafness. His depression was such that he wrote the now famous Heiligenstadt Testament (a letter to his brothers detailing his malady, in which he contemplates suicide) just a few months after writing this symphony. That anyone could write such confident and bright music at a time like that is truly amazing.

Beethoven's second tends to be overlooked somewhat, which is hardly surprising given that his third, fifth, sixth, seventh and ninth would all be serious contenders for the greatest symphony ever written. There are some wonderful moments in this work though, with the second movement in particular being especially sublime. It is one of Beethoven's major-key slow movements, and rather like its closely related counterpart in the ninth symphony, it somehow seems to conjure up a utopian vision of a better place. And that's what Beethoven was all about – creating a musical world that was happier than the one he lived in.

Day 52

21 February 2017: Szymanowski – Symphony No. 2 (1909)
I'm jumping straight to Karol Szymanowski's second symphony as his first is very much the runt of his symphonic litter. Composers are a self-critical bunch, on the whole, and I've already featured symphonies that were later withdrawn or revised beyond recognition. Szymanowski's first symphony, however, was hated by the composer even while he was writing it, saying 'it will turn out to be some sort of contrapuntal-harmonic-orchestral monster'. It was performed once and then withdrawn, and although it has been recorded, I share Szymanowski's view of it. There are plenty of other composers I could feature instead of including it for the sake of completion, so the second it is.

This hugely opulent work was his first to be widely performed outside of his native Poland, and although clearly influenced by Richard Strauss (and, some have argued, Max Reger) it breaks a few symphonic moulds along the way. In a highly unusual move, it opens with a solo violin in the manner of a concerto. Also unique for the time was the fact that it has just two movements, with the larger second movement being a theme and variations, culminating in a highly complex fugue. With its dense contrapuntal texture and meandering tonality, it isn't the easiest symphony to get a handle on, so to speak. It does, however, reward repeated listening.

Day 53

22 February 2017: Schubert – Symphony No.2 (1815)
I'm conscious of the fact that for a lot of these Classical period composers' early symphonies I've become a bit fixated on the age they were when they wrote them. It is, however, hard not to be impressed by the fact that Franz Schubert wrote this when he was just 17. Even in the year or so since he'd written his first symphony, his progression is clearly discernible. The lightness of touch in the string writing in the first movement, with flurries of notes whizzing around inside naturally flowing, but quite daring for the time, harmonic shifts is just wonderful.

The slow movement – a theme and variations – is a respectful nod to Mozart, and is a graceful moment of repose in a symphony that, for the most part, fairly rattles along. The piece as a whole is energetic and full of youthful exuberance, and despite clocking in at about 35 minutes it seems to just fly by.

Days 46 – 50

Day 46

15 February 2017: Bruckner – Symphony No. 1 (1866)
It is numerically unsatisfactory that this symphony predates Anton Bruckner's withdrawn-and-then-reinstated Symphony No. 0 that I featured last month. And while not going so far as to withdraw this one too, he appeared to be almost as unhappy with it, as he revised it constantly. The so-called 'Vienna version' dates from 1891, a full 25 years after it was first composed. For no adequately explained reason, he nicknamed this symphony 'das kecke Beserl', which is not directly translatable, but either means 'saucy maid', 'cheeky devil' or 'fresh brat' depending on which source you read.

Unusually for Bruckner, the symphony opens with a march theme, instead of a gradually emerging opening chord that he tended to prefer. The slow movement is rather more trademark Bruckner; a beautiful Adagio that was apparently an expression of love for his local butcher's daughter! The nickname probably stems from the lively Scherzo, while the fortissimo opening to the final movement is again atypical for Bruckner. It's a good symphony, but one indicative of a composer still finding his voice, and possibly due to the uncertainty over which version of is definitive, it remains the least well-known of Bruckner's nine numbered symphonies.

Day 47

16 February 2017: Mozart – Symphony No. 15 (1772)
Having started writing symphonies when he was just eight years old, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was very much the old hand when he set about writing his 15th at the age of 16. Admittedly most of his childhood symphonies were quite short, and a couple were almost certainly not written by him at all, but even so, his talent was such that his 'Salzburg Symphonies' (of which this was the second) are considered mature works. He wrote these 'Salzburg Symphonies' – all 17 of them – in a period of just over three years when he was employed by the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg as a court composer.

The Symphony No. 15 is a brisk piece of work, running to a mere 13 or 14 minutes. It certainly pays not to over-analyse it as it is about as straightforward a symphony as he ever wrote. In common with many of the works he composed for the Salzburg court it would have been written quickly for a specific occasion, and then probably never performed there again. It certainly wasn't published in Mozart's lifetime. The highlight of the symphony is the finale, which would have been a crowd-pleaser, with its fake ending no doubt raising a guffaw or two. Well, that's what passed for comedy in those days.

Day 48

17 February 2017: Prokofiev – Symphony No. 1, 'Classical' (1917)
This is one of those pieces of music that I first encountered when I was quite young, without actually knowing what it was until much later. In the late-sixties and early-seventies, there was a long-forgotten children's TV series – on Sunday evenings on ITV as I recall – called The Flaxton Boys, and it employed the first movement of Sergei Prokofiev's Classical Symphony as its theme music. It was probably about 15 years before I discovered what the music actually was.

It was a clever choice for a historical drama, as the symphony itself was a modern interpretation of an old style, namely the Classical-period symphonies of Mozart and especially Haydn. The Classical Symphony is widely regarded as starting the vogue for neoclassicism in music in the 1920s, which was a reaction to the atonality and serialism that marked the start of the 20th century. It is probably fair to say though that Prokofiev wasn't aware that he was starting a vogue for anything when he wrote it. It's a joyous 15 minutes or so that is classical in form and style, but musically unmistakably Prokofiev.

Day 49

18 February 2017: Balakirev – Symphony No. 1 (1897)
Staying in Russia, here we have the first symphony by Mily Balakirev. For me, Balakirev is bracketed with the likes of Cui, Auric and Durey – composers every music student learned about for being members of The Five or Les Six, but whose music remained blissfully unheard. With the possible exception of his piano piece Islamey, I have not knowingly heard any Balakirev, but this is exactly what Symphony A Day is all about – exploring the darker corners of the repertoire.

The Five (Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov) were hugely important figures in Russian music, helping to establish a symphonic tradition independent of its Austro-German counterpart. Balakirev's symphonies are therefore quite significant, although hardly well-known, and this one in particular had an odd life. Balakirev began working on it in 1864, but after two years he abandoned it. He eventually finished it 30 years later by adding a finale based on three Russian folk songs, remarkably managing to retain the symphony's integrity despite the three-decade gap.  I have to say it is a really good piece, and there are clear echoes of Rimsky's Scheherazade in its use of orchestral colour. By the time Balakirev had finished it though, he was 60, and his protégé Tchaikovsky had already been and gone, so any impact this particular work may have had was lost.

Day 50

19 February 2017: Brian – Symphony No. 1, 'The Gothic' (1927)
If Sundays are becoming Huge Choral Symphony Day, then we might as well pile in today with daddy of them all – Havergal Brian's gargantuan 'Gothic Symphony'. It's a suitably massive work to mark the half century of A Symphony A Day. At roughly 110 minutes, it's one of the longest ever written. There are longer symphonies, although absurdities like Dimitrie Cuclin's six-hour-long 12th symphony have never been performed, and probably never will be. What in particular makes this such a challenge is that it requires the population of a small town to play it. An orchestra of about 150 players, plus a further 40 brass players formed into four brass orchestras, four vocal soloists, a children's choir and four adult choirs totalling about 400-500 singers, in fact. The practical difficulties of assembling that many musicians to rehearse and perform a piece of that length mean that this symphony has only ever been publicly performed seven times, and recorded once.

The brutal reality is that while you can get away with that level of ostentatiousness if you're Gustav Mahler, it's harder to justify if you're a relatively obscure amateur from Stoke-on-Trent (nothing against Stoke, by the way, being a Keele grad). It is difficult to devote that much time and effort to music that is, frankly, second-rate, and having heard this symphony several times in my life, I've always found it a wholly unrewarding experience. Today was no different. I can't think of any work that is so much less than the sum of its parts. I would argue that this is two over-orchestrated three-movement symphonies glued together anyway. Part I is a 40-minute work for orchestra alone. Part II is a 70-minute choral setting of the Te Deum. Maybe had they been separated at birth and treated as stand-alone works I might have viewed them differently. Ironically, the best bit of the whole piece is the unaccompanied choral setting of Judex that opens the fifth movement, when the massive orchestra aren't actually playing. I want to like this symphony, as I'm generally all in favour of supporting neglected composers. If they choose to make their music as wilfully un-performable as this, however, then I have little sympathy.

Days 43 – 45

Day 43

12 February 2017: Mahler – Symphony No. 2, 'Resurrection' (1895)

Sundays are becoming Huge Choral Symphony Day. It's out of necessity I suppose, given that Sunday is the only day I can more or less guarantee I'll be able to set aside over an hour to listen to them. In today's case, the requirement is over 80 minutes to give Gustav Mahler's 'Resurrection Symphony' a full airing. And it's not even his longest!

It took Mahler about six years to write this, and it became arguably the most popular in his lifetime. It's certainly a massive statement, for forces that include ten horns, ten trumpets, an organ, church bells, a chorus, and (to quote the score), 'the largest possible contingent of strings'. It owes a lot to Beethoven's ninth, and Mahler was fully aware that he was inviting comparison by writing a choral final movement. As with the Beethoven it is the longest movement in the symphony, and also quotes from the earlier movements at its outset. The 'Resurrection' nickname comes from the fact that the final movement sets verses from Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection). Indeed, the programme written by Mahler and later withdrawn explicitly states that the work addresses the question of life after death. I suppose it's fitting that such an issue is given over to a work of this scale. You might wonder if the vast resources and the inordinate amount of time it takes to perform this work are worth it, but the almost herculean effort required to reach the final five minutes or so of this symphony is what makes its conclusion all the more powerful. I cannot think of any music ever written that is as emotionally overwhelming as the closing moments of the 'Resurrection Symphony'. It's impossible not to be moved by it.

Day 44

13 February 2017: Panufnik – Sinfonia Elegiaca (1957)

Andrzej Panufnik's second symphony, which he entitled Sinfonia Elegiaca, actually started life as his Symphony of Peace, written eight years earlier. At that time, Panufnik was still living in Poland and trying, mostly unsuccessfully, to conform to the strictures of Socialist Realism imposed by the Communist authorities. The Symphony of Peace was a choral symphony, written almost to an order from the regime, and while it was well-received by the public, the powers-that-be were less taken with it. It was awarded a State Prize, second class, which was roughly equivalent to damning it with faint praise, and it was criticised for being formalist and not 'ideologically pure’

Fast forward six years, and Panufnik had defected to the UK in a scene that could have been lifted straight from a John le Carré novel. Panufnik had by this point withdrawn the Symphony of Peace, and set about dismantling and rebuilding it as the Sinfonia Elegiaca. The choral sections of the original work were removed entirely and the sparser, more melancholic piece that emerged became an elegy to the victims of the Second World War. The dramatic revision of the Symphony of Peace was not driven by a commission or promise of a performance, but appears to have been a purely cathartic exercise as Panufnik attempted to rescue the work from the painful association with the regime it was originally written to please. It apparently came as a complete surprise to Panufnik that the work was given its first performance in 1957 in Houston, by the great Leopold Stokowski. Although withdrawn, a Polish radio broadcast of Symphony of Peace from 1954 still exists and it's very interesting to hear how this symphony evolved from that.

Day 45

14 February 2017: Berlioz – Symphonie fantastique (1830)

Valentine's Day – and what could be more romantic than a classic tale of boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl spurns boy, boy takes opium to forget about girl, boy imagines killing girl, boy hallucinates his own execution and girl dancing as a witch to celebrate his death. OK, so it's not a conventional love story, but this is not a conventional symphony. Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique is not completely without precedent: there are obvious parallels with Beethoven's sixth 'Pastoral' symphony, both in the number of movements (five) and its literal depiction of sounds from nature. It is, however, in almost every other respect, ground-breaking. The concept of a programme symphony, in which the music conforms to an accompanying written narrative, was completely new. As also was the symphony's idée fixe – a musical phrase associated with a particular person – which in this case represents 'the girl'. Other composers would pick up this particular ball and run with it, with Wagner especially making extensive use of leitmotiv (the German equivalent) throughout his operas.

The girl in question was an Irish actress by the name of Harriet Smithson, whom Berlioz had seen in a production of Hamlet, but only actually only met two years after the symphony was composed. Harriet was, unsurprisingly, flattered that one of the greatest symphonies of the 19th century had been written about her, and they were married the following year, although the marriage was a disaster. This is a staggering piece of work. The vision and flair on display for its time is hard to comprehend, as rule after rule is simply tossed out of the window. Orchestral effects never heard before appear, there are moments of pure black comedy such as the fall of the guillotine in the fourth movement, there's a burlesque parody of the Dies Irae plainchant in the finale – it's all absolutely bonkers. Fantastique indeed.