Days 127 – 130

Day 127

7 May 2017: Beethoven – Symphony No.4 (1806)

Insofar as Ludwig van Beethoven has a neglected symphony, then it would probably have to be the fourth. It suffers from being sandwiched between the Eroica and the Fifth, or as Robert Schumann rather more poetically put it, 'a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants'. That said, it's not as if it's never performed, it's just nowhere near as popular as the more well-known symphonies.

The fourth was written just two years after the Eroica, and it differs from its predecessor quite substantially. It's only about half as long for a start, and while the Eroica announces its arrival instantly with two powerful chords, the fourth comes in almost apologetically. Nearly three minutes of quiet introductory music have elapsed before the dynamic is lifted to a forte and the home key of B flat is finally established. The general theme throughout the work is of cheerfulness, and in many ways it harks back to the Classical tradition of Haydn, although there are darker moments. The turbulent minor-key interruption of the slow movement at about its mid-point seems to fit with the perception of Beethoven's own propensity for sudden mood changes. It's a great symphony, but the unavoidable fact is that Beethoven wrote greater ones.

Day 128

8 May 2017: Honegger – Symphony No.2 for trumpet and strings (1941)

I've always regarded Arthur Honegger as a terribly underrated composer. Known only to most music students as being a member of Les Six, many people would struggle to name any major work of his. I've long been a fan of his third symphony, the Symphonie Liturgique, but other than that and maybe Pacific 231 I can't think of many of his works that feature regularly on concert programmes.

Honegger's second symphony is identified as being written for trumpet and strings, but it is effectively for strings only with the trumpet only playing a chorale tune in the last 75 seconds or so. In fact, the work can be performed by strings alone. The effect of the trumpet in the closing bars is quite startling though, and Honegger described its use as 'like pulling out an organ stop'. It certainly comes as a triumphal climax to a work that has been mostly dark and troubled, indicative of the turbulent times in which it was written.

Day 129

9 May 2017: Nielsen – Symphony No. 3, 'Sinfonia espansiva' (1911)

I feel that Carl Nielsen stepped up a gear when wrote this symphony. After a couple of symphonic works in which he had found it a little difficult to shake off his influences, he arrived at his 'sound' in the Sinfonia espansiva; something that makes any late work of Nielsen almost instantly recognisable as his. It was an immediate hit, receiving performances across Europe within a matter of months. The title is something of a mystery though, as it is unclear what Nielsen felt was expansive about the work.

The symphony's most identifiable feature though is the other-worldy slow movement, marked Andante pastorale, which is a gorgeous depiction of the Danish landscape. There is something distinctly Scandinavian about the ghostly woodwind figures against the starkly orchestrated background, but the real trump card is played in the movement's final third. Wordless solos for baritone and soprano swoop in an out of the texture to stunning effect; a compositional masterstroke that is guaranteed to make the hairs on the back of the listener's neck stand on end.

Day 130

10 May 2017: Bantock – Hebridean Symphony (1913)

Just two years after yesterday's Nielsen symphony, we have this from Sir Granville Bantock, one of the lesser-known lights of British music. Bantock was four years and six years respectively older than Vaughan Williams and Holst and he shared their love of the British countryside and folk-song. In Bantock's case it was the folk music of Scotland (the land of his father) that he held in the highest regard. This symphony is one of several Hebrides-inspired works he composed and as well as being based on several Hebridean songs, the score is prefaced with the anonymous poem Canadian Boat Song, written about the Hebrides.

It is wonderfully evocative writing, which has rather more in common with the impressionistic symphonic poems of Arnold Bax the more conventional British symphonies of the time. There's nothing conventional about its single movement form, and while there are four identifiable sections the overall feel is of a through-composed piece. There is a satisfying unity about the way the islands are depicted as emerging from the sea mists at the outset, and then disappear into the mists again at the end. Quite how this symphony has ended up being so neglected is mystifying. When it comes to our musical heritage, we Brits do like to hide our lights under a bushel.

Days 121 – 126

Day 121

1 May 2017: Shostakovich – Symphony No. 3, 'The First of May' (1929)

I had to listen to this today, really, and as a consequence I decided to break the chronology of Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonies over the year (you might recall that the 7th featured on Day 104). The first of May has always been a significant date in the Russian calendar, having been declared a holiday in the 1880s. In writing a symphony seemingly to pander to the Soviet authorities that were later to become the bane of his life, many have viewed this as Shostakovich being the loyal patriot. However, this predates the Stalinist purges and the concept of Socialist Realism in the arts. The third symphony was written when Shostakovich was just 23 years old, and the mood in the country was still one of optimism for the new Soviet state.

The symphony is cast in a single movement divided into four sections, with the fourth being a choral setting of words by the poet Semyon Isaakovich Kirsanov. If I'm being brutally honest, it's not Dmitri's finest hour (or half-hour, or however long it takes to perform). Along with his similarly propagandist second 'To October', it represents a backward step, musically, from the prodigious brilliance of his first symphony. It has its moments, and certainly the form of the work is original, but it remains rarely performed for a reason.

Day 122

2 May 2017: Dora Pejačević – Symphony in F#m (1917)

Definitely the only female Croatian composer I'll be featuring this year, Dora Pejačević was of very noble blood. She was the daughter of a Croatian Count and a Hungarian Countess, and received private lessons in piano, violin and compositions. Although she wrote quite prolifically, her works were rarely played in her native Croatia and were often premiered in Germany, where she eventually settled.

This symphony was written during World War I, at a time when she was conscientiously doing her bit for the war effort by volunteering as a nurse in her home village. It is a really fine work; firmly in the Late-Romantic style but with occasional flashes of a more early-20th-century harmonic language. It showed far more promise than the first symphonic explorations of many more household names. Sadly, it was to be her only symphony, however, as she died at the tragically young age of 37, from kidney failure shortly after the birth of her first child. Pejačević was a unique voice in the history of music, who would surely have gone on to even greater things.

Day 123

3 May 2017: Ives – Symphony No. 4 (c.1924)

Oh my word, where do you start with this? Charles Ives's absolutely barmy fourth symphony was so far ahead of its time in almost every respect that it might have arrived in 1920s America via some wormhole in the space-time continuum. There are groups of musicians playing completely different music simultaneously, a feat that requires two (or sometimes three) conductors. There is a completely novel use of quarter-tones, utilizing a quarter-tone piano that had to be created specifically for this purpose. There's a subterranean percussion ensemble, a separate group given the name 'Star of Bethlehem' who are supposed to be suspended above the stage, and it's hard to think of another work before or since that makes quite so much use of quotation. Tunes as diverse as Yankee Doodle, Nearer My God To Thee, and JS Bach's Toccata in D minor all get thrown into a mind-blowing melting pot.

What Ives was doing here was creating a whole new genre of music, known broadly as American Experimental Music, which gave rise to a generation of composers such as John Cage, Morton Feldman, Conlon Nancarrow, the minimalist school and a whole host of others who threw the classical rulebook out of the window. The sad thing is that the logistical difficulties of performing the work meant Ives never heard it played in its entirety. It didn't receive its full premiere until 1965, eleven years after Ives's death, although the first two movements were first performed in 1927, with the third being first heard six years later. The fact that the ideas Ives had took 40 years to be realised into a performable version goes to show how advanced they were. It is an extraordinary work, which takes several listens to absorb fully.

Day 124

4 May 2017: Schoenberg – Chamber Symphony No. 1 (1906)

Arnold Schoenberg is most famous for inventing the twelve-tone technique as a means of providing order to the complete breakdown of conventional tonality in music that he as much anyone instigated. In 1906, Schoenberg was still writing nominally tonal music, extending the already stretched notion of tonality espoused by his predecessors Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. In this piece, however, the boundaries were pushed to the limits, with most of the thematic material making use of intervals of a fourth – something which wouldn't lend itself naturally to diatonic writing. The end result is music that sounds atonal for the most part whilst still conforming to many of the rules of tonality.

Certainly the audiences struggled with it when it first came to light, with early performances causing protests and riots. It is alleged that it was booed at its premiere in 1907, with no less a figure than Mahler taking issue with those of his fellow audience members responsible for the booing. It also featured in the infamous Skandalkonzert six years later, in which a concert of works by composers of the Second Viennese School was ended prematurely after the audience started throwing punches! Schoenberg's decision to write a Chamber Symphony for just 15 players was a clear indication that he did not wish to continue the tradition of gigantic symphonies passed on by Bruckner and Mahler. Yet within these much reduced forces there is a level of complexity that had never previously been achieved in Western music. It's a challenging piece, especially for the players, and it's fair to say Schoenberg wasn't out to make friends when he wrote this.

Day 125

5 May 2017: Boyce – Symphony No. 1 (c.1750)

It's worth taking a step back at this point and looking at the very genesis of the symphony as a form. In the Baroque period, the term 'symphony' was interchangeable with 'overture' and was usually reserved for the instrumental introduction to a larger work such as an oratorio. A typical example can be heard at the start of Handel's Messiah. William Boyce was an English composer born about 25 years after Handel, and he too wrote a number of overtures in the French or Italian style for other bigger, but now long-forgotten, pieces. However, in 1760, he took the unusual step of publishing eight of them as stand-alone three-movement symphonies. Although published in 1760, they had been composed at various times during the previous 20 years, so dating any of them is nearly impossible.

Symphony No.1 is in B flat major, and is a joyful work of barely five or six minutes' duration. In common with most Baroque music, the movements are mostly dance forms with the second being a Loure and the third a Gigue (although neither are named as such). In truth, this a case of a piece qualifying by my adherence to the rule of anything calling itself a symphony is a symphony. That said, it's not hard to see how the form evolved from these early explorations.

Day 126

6 May 2017: Rimsky Korsakov – Symphony No. 2 (1868)

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov was a man who constantly changed his mind. The fact that this, his second symphony, predates what we now accept to be the definitive version of his first by about 16 years gives a clue as to the confused nature of his back catalogue. This work was published in 1868 as Symphony No. 2, but was revised repeatedly and also underwent a fundamental title change. At some point, probably after writing his third symphony, he decided to call this work Symphonic Suite, "Antar". Rimsky had apparently decided that the term symphony was unsuitable for a work that effectively told a story – an approach he also applied to his later masterpiece Scheherazade.

This piece in fact has many features in common with Scheherazade. Both are based on Arabian themes and subject matter, and having arrived at the term Symphonic Suite to describe Antar, he used it again for Scheherazade when it could be argued that it is a symphony in all but name. As one might expect from anything Rimsky committed to paper, the orchestration is brilliant, and it really comes into its own in the beautiful final movement culminating a form of Liebestod as the lovers ascend to heaven. Such a quiet ending, almost a fade-out, is certainly quite unsymphonic. This work is often recommended as a follow-up piece to people who like Scheherazade and want to explore more of Rimsky's oeuvre. It is a view I would subscribe to unreservedly.

Days 118 – 120

Day 118

28 April 2017: Mozart – Symphony No. 29 (1774)

After yesterday's early symphony by Saint-Saëns, here we have, for the second day in a row, a work written by an 18-year-old. But while the Saint-Saëns was his second stab at the symphonic form, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had already knocked out a couple of dozen. The numbering of these Mozart symphonies, by the way, is more an act of cataloguing than of strict chronology as this one probably followed No. 25 (see Day 86) in order of composition.

Mozart's 29th also sits alongside No. 25 in terms of popularity among his early symphonies. The first theme is announced quietly, and then when it is repeated forte it is in a canon, with the violas and cellos playing the theme two beats after the fiddles. Thus before we get off the first page, Mozart has begun experimenting with classical sonata form. The elegant slow movement is scored, unusually, for muted strings, and again Mozart is ahead of the curve in employing practice that wouldn't become widespread for some decades yet. The finale is breathless 6/8 gallop that could only really have come from the pen of Mozart, and the symphony as a whole is the work of an old head on young shoulders.

Day 119

29 April 2017: Rautavaara – Symphony No. 3 (1961)

It is very hard to pin down Einojuhani Rautavaara's style. His composing life-cycle passed through phases of serialism, neo-classicism, and a form of minimalism. Also, his habit of revising a work written in one idiom at a time when he was more influenced by another confuses matters further. His third symphony provides an interesting collision of sensibilities, however. It employs serial methods, but he harmonises the tone-rows diatonically. Furthermore, the structure of the symphony is firmly planted in the late-romantic era.

The overriding influence here is Bruckner, especially his fourth symphony, the 'Romantic'.  It has a conventional four-movement layout, with the movements given German titles (Langsam, breit, ruhig etc). Indeed, the opening horn theme begins in exactly the same way as the Bruckner before evolving into a subtle variation. All the while though, unrelated flurries from other instruments are throwing you off the scent, as it were. In its approach of taking music of a late-romantic style and reflecting it through a modernist prism, it is redolent of Penderecki's later style. I find works of this ilk, pieces that take the best of a variety of styles and successfully marry them together into something greater, thoroughly captivating.

Day 120

30 April 2017: Vaughan Williams – A Pastoral Symphony (1922)

The first music I ever heard by Ralph Vaughan Williams was his Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, which featured in a televised concert from Orkney in 1986 that included the premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies's Violin Concerto. Understandably, I was completely bowled over by it, and later that week I went into JG Windows in Newcastle and took a punt on a couple of RVW's symphonies – this and the fourth. I recall being rather nonplussed on first hearing, but it very quickly got under my skin and remains one of my favourite symphonies. In fact, one of my A level compositions was a piece for flute and guitar based on the main theme from its fourth movement!

This is probably one of the most misunderstood symphonies ever written. The title 'Pastoral' has led to it being held up as an example of 'English cow-pat music'. The composer Peter Warlock allegedly described it as 'like a cow looking over a gate', and even Vaughan Williams himself was concerned about how it would be received, describing it as having, 'four movements, all of them slow'. Many now recognise the composer's intention was to depict not an English landscape, but a French one – specifically the battlefields of World War I. Vaughan Williams served as ambulance driver during that conflict, no doubt witnessing unimaginable horrors, and observing the rolling fields of Northern France ravaged by war. It is a genuinely moving elegy for the dead, with the solo trumpet in the second movement playing a cadenza reminiscent of the Last Post. The wordless soprano solo that bookends the final movement provides a quite ethereal moment, while the steadily rising optimistic theme of the finale is one of Vaughan Williams's greatest melodies. One of the good things to come out of the upsurge in the composer's popularity in the last 20 years or so is that this work has been freed from its misconceptions and is now starting to be appreciated as one of the great English symphonies.

Days 115 – 117

Day 115

25 April 2017: Bruckner – Symphony No.3 (1873)

Anton Bruckner was a very deferential chap. He idolised Wagner, who was only nine years older than him and ought reasonably to have been viewed as a contemporary equal. When Bruckner had completed this work, he took it and his second symphony with him to pay Wagner a visit, ostensibly to enquire which of them Wagner might like to have dedicated to him. So nervous was he at meeting his hero that he apparently forgot which one Wagner selected, and had to write to him a few days later to check.

Most of Bruckner's symphonies were revised as a result of his crippling self-doubt, but even by his standards the six versions of this piece that exist demonstrate just how susceptible to the red pen he was. The most frequently performed version is the final revision of 1889, and many now regard the work as the first of his great masterpieces. The original version was very poorly received, however. Bruckner was forced by circumstances to conduct it himself – badly – and that almost certainly gave rise to the many subsequent edits. Among the sections to go were quotes from Wagner's operas Tristan and Isolde and Die Walküre; another reason why this work is often referred to as the 'Wagner Symphony'. Bruckner clearly has a style, one some might say he stuck to rather too rigidly, but it found its first manifestation in this symphony. The classic Brucknerian opening of music emerging gradually from the mists, the epic slow movement, the quick triple-time scherzo with contrasting trio, and the brass-heavy finale – all the component parts are there. Having arrived at a satisfactory structure with his second symphony, he allied it with inspired creativity in this piece to finally create a great symphony.

Day 116

26 April 2017: Pettersson – Symphony No.7 (1967)

Swedish composer Allan Pettersson was already in mid-fifties and in very poor health when he finally achieved international recognition with his seventh symphony. Whilst undoubtedly a great work, it's unclear why this symphony suddenly propelled him into the limelight. His oeuvre was largely unknown outside Scandinavia, however within a couple of decades of its composition, his Symphony No.7 had been recorded by four different orchestras, and triggered an international interest in his subsequent output.

In common with many of his symphonies, it is a single-movement work, and although it is approximately 45 minutes of unbroken intensity, it is by no means the longest. It's an unrelentingly dark and tense work, indeed Jean Christensen, in his book New Music of the Nordic Countries, makes an interesting comparison, saying Petterson's music is 'the musical equivalent of Ingmar Bergman's serious movies.' I discovered this symphony only very recently and think it is a quite magnificent. His use of ostinati and pedal notes sustained for unfeasibly long durations ramp up the tension to at times unbearable levels. It's not for people who listen to classical music for relaxation, but it is a bona fide masterpiece.

Day 117

27 April 2017: Saint-Saëns – Symphony No. 1 in E flat major (1853)

Camille Saint-Saëns was something of a child genius, and this really is quite an assured work when you consider that he was only 18 years old when he wrote it. Saint-Saëns did actually compose an un-numbered symphony at the age of 15, to which no opus number was given. And while it's clearly a prodigious achievement for one so young, it is terribly derivative of Beethoven and Mendelssohn and I've bypassed it for that precise reason.

It would have been impossible for any composer writing in the middle of the 19th century to have produced anything entirely bereft of influences, but the young Saint-Saëns certainly had a go. The first movement is a standard sonata form and the last movement a brilliant fugue, but within those classical formal strictures Saint-Saëns' own gift for melody shines through. Nowhere is that more evident than in the exquisite Adagio, in which a gorgeous melody starts in the clarinet and soars above tremolando strings and harp chords. The deserved popularity of his third 'Organ' symphony means that Saint-Saëns' other symphonic works rarely get a look in, which is a pity because this in particular ought to be performed more.

Days 112 – 114

Day 112

22 April 2017: Villa-Lobos – Symphony No.3, 'War' (1919)

The Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos is probably best-known for his Bachianas Brasileiras, a number of suites written in the style of JS Bach. For me, as a guitarist, it is the works he wrote for that instrument that I got to know first. His Five Preludes and Twelve Studies are all pieces I've had a stab at playing even though, for the most part, they remain tantalisingly beyond my capabilities. The twelve symphonies he wrote are not well known unfortunately, certainly not outside of Brazil.

This work was the first of an intended trilogy of symphonies written to celebrate the end of World War I. At this point I will confess that I was previously unaware of Brazil's involvement in the conflict (on the Allies' side, in response to the sinking of a number of merchant ships in the Atlantic). In the end, only two of the symphonies are known to have been written. This was followed by his fourth symphony, entitled 'Victory', but the fifth, provisionally entitled 'Peace' is either lost or was never actually composed. When this work was first performed it comprised only three movements, with the profound third movement being added many years later, possibly as late as 1955. Given that this movement is almost as long as the other three combined it changed the nature of the work as a whole entirely. Villa-Lobos's tradmark use of ostinati gives this symphony a unity that would otherwise be missing from its thematically incoherent structure. The audacious finale which has the Brazilian and French national anthems playing simultaneously is something Charles Ives would have been proud of. It's a very interesting piece, but not a great one.

Day 113

23 April 2017: Mahler – Symphony No. 4 (1900)

I would find the prospect of choosing just one of Gustav Mahler's symphonies too difficult to call, as, with maybe only a couple of exceptions, I could make a case for any of them. This would have a stronger claim than most though, as I remember listening to it a lot when I first bought a copy in the mid-eighties. It's just about the most 'instant' of Mahler's symphonies, with tunes that could almost be called 'catchy' at every turn. It's relatively short, at around 55 minutes, and uses a more or less standard orchestra, meaning it's one of the frequently performed of his works.

The symphony is based on one of Mahler's own songs, Das himmlische Leben, which is set, mostly unchanged, for solo soprano as the final movement, but also provides the basis for the thematic material of the earlier movements. The slow movement is one of Mahler's most beautiful, and its theme and variations form draws parallels with Beethoven's ninth. Towards the end of the movement though, comes one of Mahler's most inspired passages. Just as the movement appears to be fading away to nothing, the string section signals an orchestral tutti with prominent brass and mighty timpani strikes. It is the child's vision of heaven, described in song in the last movement. A magical moment in a symphony that is an absolute joy from start to finish.

Day 114

24 April 2017: Pärt – Symphony No.3 (1971)

Rather like Górecki, who I featured a few days ago, Arvo Pärt had something of a road to Damascus moment in his compositional life. Both began their careers as modernists, exploring serialism and every avant garde technique that was in vogue in the middle of the last century. They both then abandoned this in favour of what is occasionally referred to as Holy Minimalism, which was obviously more palatable and brought them popularity with a much wider audience.

Pärt's crisis point came in the late-sixties when he found that he nothing left to say and felt unable to compose at all. Seeking inspiration for his third symphony, he decided to immerse himself in early music and Gregorian chant. Having stumbled on this new means of expression, Pärt then wrote no music for six years while he developed his tintinnabuli system (more of that when I come to his fourth symphony later in the year). This work then represents the exact transition point between the two styles, and part of me wishes he'd written more music at this time rather than embark on his long silence. When he was merely incorporating early music sensibilities into his earlier approach to composition, the end results were far more interesting than the mostly dull music he then went on to write. As a consequence, I find this rare transitional work one of the most satisfying of his orchestral output.

Days 108 – 111

Day 108

18 April 2017: Panufnik – Sinfonia Concertante, for flute, harp and strings (1973)

Sinfonia Concertante is Andrzej Panufnik’s fourth symphony, and it differs from its predecessor the Sinfonia Sacra (see Day 77) written ten years earlier, in almost every respect. Despite the huge success of his Sinfonia Sacra, Panufnik had decided in the intervening decade, to rethink his harmonic language, building entire works from a simple three-note 'cell' – in this case C-D-A, first heard in the harp at the outset. The forces used are much reduced, and the sparser, almost minimalist thematic material makes for a far more austere sound world.

The first movement is elegant and melodic using the 'cell' to create symmetrical patterns, while the contrasting second movement is deliberately asymmetrical and dance-like. The overall result is a work that is actually more typical of his output as a whole, as Panufnik spent the rest of his career refining this novel approach to composition. It's fair to say that this symphony was a successful experiment, whereas some later symphonies ended up as rather dry, almost academic exercises. The sensitivity of the writing for such delicate instrumentation makes this a wholly satisfying work.

Day 109

19 April 2017: Glazunov – Symphony No. 4 (1893)

This was a first hearing for me, and not just for this work but for any Alexander Glazunov symphony. Prior to today, the only work of his I was in any way familiar with was his wonderful Violin Concerto, and his orchestration of pieces by Borodin, such as Prince Igor, and the Petite Suite. Once again, I find myself cursing the fact that I'm only discovering this music now.

Glazunov wasn't a member of The Mighty Handful of Russian composers led by Balakirev, but he bought into their ethos of creating a distinctly Russian form of music, which departed from Germanic tradition. After three symphonies based on 'Russian' themes, Glazunov decided to venture off into new territory, and as he said, give 'subjective impressions of myself'. It's a wonderful symphony, with one of loveliest opening movements I've heard in a while. There's a delightful jaunty and delightful scherzo, before the melancholic music of the first movement returns briefly, finally giving way to a spirited Allegro. I'm now thinking of ways I can squeeze a few more Glazunov symphonies into my Symphony A Day schedule for the rest of the year.

Day 110

20 April 2017: Sibelius – Symphony No.2 (1902)

With many of my favourite composers, and I would place Jean Sibelius in that category, I can recall the work or performance that first triggered my interest in them. For some reason I can't with Sibelius, but I'm fairly sure this was the symphony I got to know first. I do remember hoovering up recordings of all of his symphonies during the mid-eighties and my LP of Simon Rattle conducting the CBSO in this work was a big favourite at the time.

It remains one of Sibelius's most popular works, with its stirring finale almost guaranteeing a rapturous response whenever it is performed in concerts. The blaze of brass that declaims the closing bars of the symphony in some ways disguises the fact that much of what has gone before was actually quite austere. Everything is building toward the final movement, however, which is a compositional triumph as all of the fragments of themes heard in the preceding music are pieced together like a kind of jigsaw puzzle into one grandiose melody. I never tire of listening to this, marvelling at the brilliance of the concept.

Day 111

21 April 2017: Górecki – Symphony No. 1 (1959)

The staggering success of Henryk Mikołaj Górecki's third symphony, also known as the 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs', in the early nineties was particularly difficult for me to get my head around. The previous year, as part of my music degree, I had submitted a dissertation on post-war Polish music, which had, after a period of restriction under the Socialist Realism doctrine, turned on a dime and found itself at the forefront of the avant garde in the late-1950s. It featured, among others, Górecki who was one of the new wave of experimental composers alongside other relatively obscure names such as Serocki, Baird, Krauze, etc. So imagine my surprise when, barely a year later, the same composer was becoming virtually a household name with a 50-minute slab of quasi-minimalism. I suppose that would be as nothing to the shock many of the million or so people who bought the now-famous Elektra-Nonesuch recording would have received if they'd then sat down to listen to this.

This is the Górecki I got to know. His first symphony was his first large-scale work, written when he was still a composition student – albeit a 25-year-old one. It is written for string orchestra and percussion, and for the most part the two sections are pitted against each other, especially in the first movement. It is an entirely dissonant and uncompromising work that is demanding to play and, to be honest, almost as demanding to listen to. It is a bold and confident early work, but it gives absolutely no clue as to the direction Górecki's music would eventually take.

Days 104 – 107

Day 104

14 April 2017: Shostakovich – Symphony No.7 'Leningrad' (1941)

The symphonies written by Dmitri Shostakovich between 1935 and 1945 transcended music and took on a far greater political and historical significance. The fourth and fifth symphonies emerged from his battles with the Soviet authorities, but by the time he came to write his seventh, Russia was in the grip of a war with the invading Nazis. Once again the music he wrote took on a life of its own, and became an act of resistance. Shostakovich dedicated the symphony to the city of Leningrad, which at the time of the work's completion was under siege by the Germans. The Siege of Leningrad wouldn't be lifted for another two years, by which time well over a million people had died.

Incredibly, this symphony was performed in Leningrad during the Siege, in 1942 by the half-starved remnants of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra. The performance was broadcast on loudspeakers all over the city – a quite extraordinary act of defiance. The music itself is imposing, even by Shostakovich's breathtaking standards. It is his longest symphony, and at around 80 minutes is only surpassed in the standard orchestral repertoire by a handful of other works. The defining feature of the symphony is the so-called 'invasion theme' that occupies roughly the central third of the gigantic first movement. This 22-bar march theme starts in barely audible pizzicato strings and builds through 12 repetitions in a relentless ten-minute crescendo of increasing savagery. The other three movements are similarly impassioned and taut, eventually culminating in another of the composer's ambiguous endings of forced triumphalism. Much has been made of the fact that the symphony was written before the Siege of Leningrad actually began, so it clearly couldn't have depicted the actual events. The dedication is entirely suitable though. The Russians eventually fought off the invading forces, but the victory won was a cost so colossal as to be beyond comprehension.

Day 105

15 April 2017: Bruch – Symphony No. 3 (1886)

Max Bruch is, rather unfairly, seen as a one-hit wonder. Much as Pachelbel's Canon or Cesar Franck's Symphony in D dominate those composers' respective outputs, Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 is just about the only work many casual classical music fans would be aware of. There is plenty of other good stuff out there of course, Kol Nidrei, for example, and a lovely Concerto for Clarinet, Viola and Orchestra. And then there are three symphonies of admittedly variable quality.

The third is probably the best of them. It's a perfectly good late-Romantic symphony, that maybe just lacks a really memorable tune to enable it to stand out from the crowd. It was written in Liverpool, oddly enough, when Bruch was, for a short time, conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic. While it may have been written in England, it depicts the Rhineland of Bruch's birth and is laden with folk-like melodies and the bustle of rural village life. To be honest, it's not on a par with the famed violin concerto, but it's definitely worth more of an airing than it presently gets.

Day 106

16 April 2017: Henze – Symphony No. 7 (1984)

Hans Werner Henze was one of the most complex characters in contemporary music and is rightly regarded as one of the greatest composers of the second half of the twentieth century. His leftist political views and homosexuality led to his moving to Italy from his native Germany when he was in his late-twenties, by which point his music was already starting to absorb a myriad of influences from serialism to jazz.

The seventh is the most orthodox and best-known of his ten symphonies; Henze even stated that it was in the Beethovenian tradition. It is a work I became familiar with through a BBC documentary called The Middle of Life, broadcast in 1987, which chronicled the British premiere of this symphony, given by the CBSO under Simon Rattle at the previous year's Proms to mark Henze's 60th birthday. It made an instant impression on me, especially the final movement, which is a beautiful un-sung setting of Friedrich Hölderlin's poem Hälfte des Lebens. It is a marked contrast to a lively, rhythmic and wildly dissonant first movement. There is so much going on throughout the symphony that it is impossible to absorb it all in one listen, but even a single hearing is a highly rewarding experience.

Day 107

17 April 2017: Haydn – Symphony No. 49, 'La Passione' (1768)

Josef Haydn was deeply immersed in his Sturm und Drang period of composition when he wrote his forty-ninth symphony in 1768. The title of La Passione is, in fact, thought not to have anything to do with the emotional content of this era of the German arts, but is attributable to a bit of jiggery-pokery to ensure an Easter performance in Schwerin in 1790. The symphony was said to be based on the Passion, thus circumventing the restrictions on secular music during Holy Week. It's somewhat appropriate therefore that I've chosen to listen to this on Easter Monday.

The structure is unusual for the Classical era, in that it adopts the Baroque form of a Sonata da chiesa (church sonata) of successively slow, fast, slow, and fast movements. Hence it opens with an Adagio, and it is one of unusual darkness. Indeed the whole work, apart from the trio of the third movement, is in F minor, thus there is very little let-up in the seriousness of the piece. It's a symphony very much odds with the general perception of Haydn as a composer of lightweight, court-pleasing music.