Saturday 17 June 2017

Days 163 – 168

Day 163

12 June 2017: Oliver Knussen – Symphony No. 3 (1979)
Scottish-born composer Oliver Knussen made an immediate impact as both a composer and a conductor when, at the age of just 15, he was commissioned to write his first symphony. He then found himself conducting the symphony's première at the Royal Festival Hall when the original conductor fell ill. After such a baptism of fire his future success was almost assured, but his second symphony, written when he was still only 19 consolidated his position as one of the country's leading living composers.

His third symphony was eagerly awaited, but Knussen found work on it difficult. He began it in 1973, originally conceiving it as a 30-minute work based on the Shakespearean character Ophelia. He eventually abandoned it, working on other pieces in the meantime, before revisiting the work six years later. The original material was honed and refined into the brightly coloured 15-minute work it became. A huge amount of material is crammed into its short length. After a slow and mysterious introduction, the music explodes into a section labelled Fantastico, which careers headlong into a string-led Allegro. Eventually when this seems to have consumed all of its energy, a long-held chord subsides into a Molto tranquillo final section, which still has a few jarring surprises up its sleeve! 



Day 164

13 June 2017: Beethoven – Symphony No. 5 (1808)
'Da da da dum', sang Ford Prefect to the Vogon guard in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as a desperate, last-ditch attempt to avoid being thrown out of the Vogon spacecraft and into the vacuum of space. According to the author, Ford Prefect had 'grabbed for the only bit of culture he knew offhand'. That it should be the opening bars of this symphony says a lot for what is almost certainly the most instantly recognisable theme in the history of classical music.

I often consider this to be the Bohemian Rhapsody of classical music: it has become so familiar over time that it's possible to lose sight of just how brilliant it is. The sheer audacity of having, as a primary theme in the first movement, a figure of just four notes, three of which are the same, is breathtaking. The first movement alone would have been enough to secure the symphony's legacy, but Beethoven follows it with an Andante con moto featuring one of the most beautiful melodies ever written. Another stroke of genius comes at the end of the third movement scherzo as Beethoven cleverly segues into the finale via a transition passage in which the music seems almost to disappear into a tunnel before emerging in a blaze of C major. Hit after hit after hit; I find it impossible to tire of listening to this piece.



Day 165

14 June 2017: Poul Ruders – Symphony No. 4, 'An Organ Symphony' (2008)
Danish composer Poul Ruders, in his notes about this piece, acknowledges that by calling it An Organ Symphony he was immediately linking it to that rather more famous example of the genre – Saint-Saëns' Symphony No. 3. It has very little else in common with the Saint-Saëns, but it once again demonstrates that the combination of organ and orchestra is a winning one. Ruders trained as an organist, so was clearly on comfortable ground writing for the instrument, and its use here is essentially as an obbligato instrument.

The slow and dreamy Prelude depicts, according to Ruders, the organ and the orchestra waking up, side-by-side, and getting to know one another. After a quite solemn Cortége there is a brief but virtuosic Etude, which is the closest the work comes to resembling an organ concerto. All of which builds up to the magnificent Chaconne that closes the work, a constantly shifting and fragmenting musical landscape moving around the recurring theme, which eventually scurries towards a dramatic climax.



Day 166

15 June 2017: Dutilleux – Symphony No. 2, 'Le Double' (1959)
Henri Dutilleux was one of the great perfectionists in music. Although he was 43 years old when he composed this symphony, it was only the third purely orchestral work that he had considered good enough to be published. It was given the name Le Double by the composer as it was written for a full orchestra plus a smaller 12-piece chamber ensemble. Another meaning attributed to the name is that the two ensembles double or mirror each other to produce some wonderful aural effects. Le Double was certainly a more concise label than the previously considered Symphonie pour Grand et Petit Orchestre or Symphonie pour Grand Orchestre et Orchestre de Chambre.

I think this is probably my favourite piece of Dutilleux, although his Cello Concerto runs it close. The central Andantino sostenuto is quite magnificent with a steadily moving bass underpinning interweaving solo lines, before coming to rest while an impassioned trumpet soars up to the heights. The jazz-like rhythms in the third movement would certainly come as a surprise to those dismissing Dutilleux as a 'difficult' composer, based on his later style. It's a work that rewards repeated listening as new things seem to emerge on each hearing.



Day 167

16 June 2017: Mozart – Symphony No. 33 (1779)
Having failed to find permanent employment from his trip to Paris in 1778, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart returned to Salzburg a somewhat disheartened figure. In addition, while he was away, his mother had died, so this work dates from a low ebb in the composer's life. Not that one would know it from the music, which is essentially cheerful throughout.

The symphony was originally a three-movement work, in common with his 'Paris' symphony (see Day 141) written the previous year. The third movement Minuet and Trio was added three years later, seemingly to conform with the Viennese vogue for four-movement symphonies. It turned out to be a great crowd-pleaser, receiving many performances around Europe and was even published in his lifetime – unlike the vast majority of his other symphonies.



Day 168

17 June 2017: Stravinsky – Symphony in C (1940)
This was the second work that Igor Stravinsky gave the name 'symphony' to, following his Symphony Of Psalms some ten years earlier (see Day 24). People often refer to Stravinsky as having a neoclassical period, to which this piece allegedly belongs. However, as his earliest neoclassical work was Pulcinella, which dates from 1919, it's probably fairer to say that neoclassicism was a style to which Stravinsky would occasionally turn. The circumstances surrounding Symphony in C's composition were very difficult for the composer. His wife and eldest daughter contracted tuberculosis, and Stravinsky himself was diagnosed with it shortly before he began working on this piece. Stravinsky's wife and daughter both died of the illness, shortly before his mother also died, and then the outbreak of World War forced him to emigrate to the USA.

By this point, Stravinsky had finished two of the symphony's four movements, and the composer acknowledged there is a stylistic shift in the two subsequent movements that were composed in Massachusetts and California, having put the catastrophes of the previous year behind him. It has to be said they're quite subtle differences and not immediately apparent to the unaware listener. Likewise, there isn't really a note of tragedy in the work either, as Stravinsky approached this as an entirely abstract composition, refraining from reference to his personal circumstances at the time. In this work, Stravinsky studied the symphonies of Haydn, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and reflected them through his own musical prism. It has been described as a 'cubist portrait of a symphony', which I think is a very astute observation.


Sunday 11 June 2017

Days 159 – 162

Day 159

8 June 2017: Parry – Symphony No. 3, 'English' (1889)
Despite no less a figure than Prince Charles publicly expressing his love for the symphonies of Hubert Parry in recent times, they remain resolutely on the neglected pile. It was not always thus, and his third symphony received many performances in his day. It was written two years after his hugely successful Blest Pair Of Sirens, and as such capitalised on his increased popularity. It became the most frequently performed English symphony for twenty years, until Elgar's first came along – although to be frank there wasn't a great amount of competition for that honour around at the time.

Quite why it is referred to as the 'English' symphony is a bit of a mystery. It may be that it is less derivative of Teutonic influence than its predecessors, or, as some have suggested, it is an English equivalent to Mendelssohn's 'Italian', or Schumann's 'Rhenish' symphonies. Whatever the reason, it seems an entirely apposite name, as this piece almost defines what we mean by English music. The first movement is typically stately with an opening theme that seems to stem from military music, whereas the magnificent Andante sostenuto is another of those gloriously elegiac movements that Parry does so well. As a nation we just do not treasure this music as much as we should.



Day 160

9 June 2017: Prokofiev – Symphony No. 3 (1929)
Sergei Prokofiev took a rather unconventional approach to the writing of his third symphony. In the mid-1920s, he started working, without commission, on his opera The Fiery Angel. Although scheduled for performance at the Berlin State Opera in 1928, the production never happened, and indeed it remained unstaged until 1955 – two years after Prokofiev's death. Rather than let the music go to waste, however, he decided to fashion some of the music into a symphony.

After the general failure of his second symphony (see Day 101), which he felt had become impenetrable through over-working, perhaps Prokofiev decided that a different approach was required. It worked, as this is more typical of his subsequent symphonic output than the two that went before it. The opening is somewhat misleading as the crashing opening chords with bells and cymbals do not return, and although some of the writing is as dense as in the previous symphony, it is far more focussed here. The ethereal slow movement has an other-wordly quality, while the scherzo – drawn from the incantation scene from Act Two of The Fiery Angel – is alienating and quite disturbing. This is not by any means his best work, and it's very much a rarity in the concert halls, but it is a fine period piece from the pre-Stalinist period when he was still able to speak in his own voice.



Day 161

10 June 2017: Philip Glass – Symphony No. 2 (1994)
Philip Glass was still relatively new to orchestral writing when he set to work on his second symphony. This was, in fact, only the sixth piece he'd composed for a full orchestra, having made his name as a minimalist composer, writing for his own ensemble. He had, by this point, turned away permanently from that earlier style and was still trying to adapt some of those principles into something approaching conventional forms. In this work, he explores polytonality, having felt that earlier experiment by composers such as Honegger and Milhaud in the 1930s and 1940s hadn't really been built upon.

This was the first time I'd heard this symphony, but being familiar with pieces such as his 'Low' Symphony (see Day 31) and The Light which preceded it, a lot of it sounded quite familiar. Many of the devices employed in those works reappear here and the harsh reality is that, at this time, Glass was a composer with a very limited musical vocabulary. There is added piquancy from the polytonal writing, but it is used within a framework that is inherently uninteresting. It's not a work I'm likely to be revisiting in the foreseeable future.



Day 162

11 June 2017: Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 4 (1934)
To anyone familiar only with Ralph Vaughan Williams's Lark Ascending or Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, this may come as quite a shock. It did to audiences at the time, given that his previous three symphonies were all broadly impressionistic depictions of, in turn, the sea, London, and the (French) countryside. Right from the opening bars it was clear that this is a very different beast. Crashing dissonances, angry brass, and more downright aggression than in anything he'd written before, there's no 'cow-pat' music here.

It certainly caused quite a stir. Even RVW conceded, 'I don’t know whether I like it, but it’s what I meant.' I remember buying this and the third on LP at the same time back in the mid-80s, having heard neither before. The Pastoral Symphony conformed exactly to what I expected, so when I put this on the turntable I wondered if it was a wrongly labelled work by a different composer. There has been much debate about what triggered this, with eminent musicians such as Adrian Boult asserting that Vaughan Williams somehow foresaw the rise of fascism, which is clearly errant nonsense. The composer asserted all along that this was pure music, bereft of external influence – again differentiating it from its predecessors. Once the initial shock had worn off, I've always considered this to be one of Ralph Vaughan Williams's greatest works. It seems, by all accounts, to more accurately reflect the composer's own personality than the popular perception of him as a loveable folk-song collector.


Wednesday 7 June 2017

Days 152 – 158

Day 152

1 June 2017: Bruckner – Symphony No. 4 (1874)
I know that I have heard all of Anton Bruckner's symphonies several times, but the only ones that I could readily identify from just a few bars are this one and his seventh. This is, without doubt, one of his finest works and its popularity in concert halls worldwide is testament to the fact that, arguably for the first time, Bruckner had composed a genuinely flawless symphony. It was given the name 'Romantic' by the composer himself, essentially to tie in with the programme he originally devised for the work relating to medieval knights and citadels.

Any assessment of this symphony cannot overlook the fact that, even by Brucknerian standards, this work had an extraordinarily prolonged compositional history. From its first sketches to the final known version of the work, it was revised, corrected, edited, changed, published and re-published countless times. More controversially, it is even thought that other composers were involved in the revision process. For the listener, it pays to extricate oneself from the scholarly web of its tortured genealogy and simply revel in the music. From the solo horn that opens the work – which was appropriated by Rautavaara to open his Symphony No. 3 (see Day 119) – through its gorgeous Adagio and typically boisterous, hunting-themed scherzo, to its powerful finale, Bruckner scarcely misses a step. His art of continuous refinement reaches its peak in this work.



Day 153

2 June 2017: Grace Williams – Symphony No. 1 (1943)
Or, to give it its full title, Symphony No. 1, in the form of Symphonic Impressions of the Glendower Scene in "Henry IV Part 1". Not exactly a title that trips off the tongue. Welsh-born composer Grace Williams is yet another mid-20th century British composer whose work has been largely neglected. It could be argued that she has gained popularity in recent years due to an increase in interest in female composers who had been hitherto ignored. If her gender is actually counting in her favour nowadays then this can only be a good thing, because I really loved this symphony.

Williams was a pupil of Gordon Jacob and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, and she was the first British woman to write a film score (Blue Scar in 1949). Insofar as she has written a popular work, it is the symphonic poem Penillion, but even that is hardly ever performed. This is the first of two symphonies, and as its elongated title suggests, it takes its inspiration from The Bard. It's not a programme symphony, however, and follows a standard four-movement structure. The Andante solenne epilogue is a quite magnificent, passionate elegy to Owen Glendower. There is a grandiose beauty to the closing three or four minutes that I found totally captivating. 



Day 154

3 June 2017: Sibelius – Symphony No. 3 (1907)
Jean Sibelius met Gustav Mahler shortly after writing this symphony. At this meeting, the oft-reported exchange occurred between them, in which Sibelius, having expressed his preference for a severity of symphonic form, provoked Mahler's famous response, "The symphony must be like the world. It must be all-embracing." So at the same time as Mahler was writing his epic 90-minute Symphony No. 8 'Symphony of a Thousand' for massive choir and orchestra, Sibelius produced this sparse and tightly argued work.

It is almost a miniature in symphonic terms. Light and neoclassical, this is Sibelius at his brightest and breeziest. And yet it is musically sparse, with the whole work drawing on a minimal amount of thematic material. This represented a shift from his earlier symphonic explorations, which were distinctly late-Romantic in feel, and as such set the tone for the rest of his career as a composer. The third occupies a unique position in Sibelius's output in that it allies a brightness of spirit to and an austere sensibility and the effect is quite wonderful. The repetitive figures lend themselves more readily to dynamic shaping, allowing Sibelius to concentrate on refining the form of the work to his own needs. It will probably never be the most popular of his symphonies, but it will always be appreciated by Sibelius purists.



Day 155

4 June 2017: Britten – Spring Symphony (1949)
OK so it's not spring any more, but the fact that Benjamin Britten set this, his second symphony, for orchestra, soloists, adult and boys' choirs means it's the return of Choral Symphony Sunday! The work is a setting of 12 poems, which on the face of it looks more like a song cycle than a genuine symphony. The piece is divided into four parts, however, giving it a more conventional symphonic structure. After a long slow introduction, poems 2–5 form an Allegro first movement, 6–8 a slow movement, 9–11 a scherzo, while the final poem London, to Thee I do Present provides a rousing Finale.

According to Britten, the poems are ordered in such a way as to represent 'the progress of Winter to Spring'. The choice of poems is interesting too, with all but one dating from the 17th century or earlier. The exception is no. 8: a setting of his friend WH Auden's Out on the lawn I Lie in bed that brings the slow movement to a close. It's debatable whether Britten's attempt to structure the texts into a symphonic form is a success, but there are some wonderful moments with the clear highlight being the finale. The various vocal forces finally come together with a spirited wordless chorus, which gives way to the boys’ choir's rendition of Sumer Is Icumen In. It's a passage very reminiscent of the climax of Act III Scene I of his opera Peter Grimes, written just four years earlier, albeit in a rather more celebratory mood!



Day 156

5 June 2017: Martinů – Symphony No. 4 (1945)
Czech-born Bohuslav Martinů fled to the USA from his home in Paris in 1941 following the Nazi invasion of France. He was 51 at the time, and despite being a quite prolific composer, he hadn't to that point composed a symphony. It was therefore quite remarkable that he promptly set about writing five symphonies in as many years, with a sixth following in 1953.

This symphony, his fourth, coincides with the end of World War II, having been written between April and June 1945. While some commentators have sought to associate the work with world events, it seems unlikely that Martinů was responding to developments on the other side of the Atlantic. His chief concern is with its organic method of composition, noting in his diary 'how ingeniously the whole symphony grows out of one motif'. There is a mood of positivity around the work, and an abundance of vibrant rhythmic vitality, especially in the outer movements. The heart of the piece is the third movement Largo, which is scored mostly for strings, and features some gloriously impassioned lyrical writing. I have to be honest and say Martinů has, for the most part, passed me by as a composer, but this symphony went a long way towards opening my eyes to him.



Day 157

6 June 2017: CPE Bach – Symphony in E flat major, Wq 179 (1757)
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was the fifth of Johann Sebastian Bach's 20 children. Many of them carried on the family tradition, but CPE and Johann Christian Bach (see Day 88) are probably the best-known as composers in their own right. Like his brother JC, he is known to have influenced Mozart. Indeed, Mozart once said of CPE Bach that he 'is the father, we are the children'.

His most popular works are his symphonies, with the nine that he wrote in Berlin in 1750s and 1760s – collectively known as the 'Berlin Symphonies' – being the most enduring. This was catalogued as the seventh of the nine although there is no evidence that the ordering is chronological. It is only a shade over ten minutes long, but the frantic writing in the outer movements means a lot of detail is crammed into its short duration. Although thought of as a Baroque–Classical transitional composer, this feels a lot more the latter than the former, with contrapuntal passages seldom found. The slow movement is lovely yet hesitant in feel, with melodic lines breaking off as if mid-thought. It's not hard to understand why Mozart thought so highly of him.



Day 158

7 June 2017: Shostakovich – Symphony No. 8 (1943)
Without really planning it, I seem to have grouped together a cluster of symphonies written during World War II. This was written in 1943, the same year as the Grace Williams symphony featured last Friday, and two years before the Martinů from a couple of days ago. Those works were largely bereft of direct associations with the war, but, as with almost all of Shostakovich's work, it is impossible to separate this from the events surrounding it. And while the seventh symphony – the Leningrad (see Day 104) – struck a note of defiant optimism, here the mood is overwhelmingly tragic. It is an uncompromising and at times desolate work, written at a time when Russian losses were being measured in the millions, and although Russia were on their way to winning the war, Shostakovich found little to celebrate in the cost of the anticipated victory.

In many ways this is the much darker twin brother of the fifth symphony. The vast first movement's opening theme is very closely related to that of the fifth, and the movement evolves in a similar fashion. It is heartbreakingly moving, with shrill cries of anguish succeeding only in the deepening the morass of pain. Two macabre scherzos hardly lighten the mood; the second features a brutal moto perpetuo theme which passes around the orchestra while hollow screams ring out over it from the other instruments. After building to an agonised crescendo, this then crashes into the most tragic music Shostakovich ever wrote. The fourth movement Passacaglia, which follows without a break, paints a picture so desolate that it has no equal in any other composition I've heard. Across its twelve repetitions, the Passacaglia theme in the bass is accompanied only by slow moving muted string chords and solo instruments that seem lost in a wasteland. It is absolutely devastating. Eventually, after around twelve minutes, it shifts almost apologetically into a major key, setting up another of Shostakovich's enigmatic finales. This has an almost pastoral feel at first, giving an impression of people trying to rebuild their lives after the tragedies that have passed, but this is again shattered as the drum roll and accompanying cry of anguish from the first movement returns. It's hard to know what to make of the sparsely orchestrated coda that concludes the symphony. It seems to convey relief at survival, rather than any mood of celebration, and that is the overriding feeling that the audience is left with. It's a gruelling listen, and there is precious little salvation at the end, but not all art is pretty flowers.


Wednesday 31 May 2017

Days 148 – 151

Day 148

28 May 2017: Mahler – Symphony No. 5 (1902)
This symphony has always been considered one of Gustav Mahler's finest, however its popularity soared still further when its Adagietto was used in the 1971 Luchino Visconti film of Thomas Mann's novella A Death In Venice. This always reminds of a story the film's star Dirk Bogarde used to tell of a Hollywood mogul who loved the music, leading him to ask Visconti who'd written it. When told who it was, he replied, "Who's this Mahler guy's agent?" Anyway, I digress, there is a lot more to this symphony than its exquisite fourth movement. It was the first purely orchestral one Mahler had written since No. 1, and insofar as a 70-minute symphony can be tightly focussed, it feels a lot leaner than much of what he'd written before.

The work is in five movements, divided, rather pointlessly in my view, into three parts (movements 1 and 2 are 'Part 1'; 4 and 5 are 'Part 3'). The opening is quite unusual, with a solo trumpet playing a subdued fanfare to a funeral march. Even Mahler conceded that people might have expected the first and second movements to be the wrong way round. There is a sense of unity throughout the work, which derives from earlier-quoted themes constantly emerging in later movements, with the Rondo finale in particular making repeated use of the secondary theme from the Adagietto. The journey from the funereal opening movement to the rollicking finale is what makes this symphony such an uplifting experience, especially in a concert hall where its manageable length and relatively standard orchestral forces make it an ever-popular choice.



Day 149

29 May 2017: Khachaturian – Symphony No. 1 (1934)
For a composer whose name would probably not be well-known to the public at large, Aram Khachaturian has written more than his share of popular tunes. His ballet Spartacus provided the theme tune to the 1970s TV show The Onedin Line, while another of ballets – Gayane – supplied not only the Adagio that was the evocative music accompanying the space flight in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey, but also had an electric guitar version of its Sabre Dance turned into a top five hit for Dave Edmunds' Love Sculpture in November 1968. Not 'arf, pop-pickers.

I find Khachaturian's music to be almost instantly recognisable. His native Armenia shares a border with Iran and Turkey and there is a strong middle-eastern inflection to his melodic lines, especially in the first movement here. If there is a criticism of this work, it is that, at times, it feels like a succession of folk tunes stitched together. It isn't, but there is an episodic feel throughout. That said, the ravishing orchestral colours he employs more than make up for that. Khachaturian is undoubtedly best known for his ballet music, and of his symphonies, only really the second is performed on anything approaching a regular basis. There is plenty to enjoy in this work, however.



Day 150

30 May 2017: Bax – Symphony No. 3 (1929)
And so, we bring up the 150 with arguably the best of Arnold Bax's symphonies. He wrote seven, which means that this is third of seven occasions this year when I will bemoan the fact that they are rarely performed. I've often wondered why; it could just be down to the changing tastes of the British public, or overly cautious artistic directors steering clear of unfamiliar works. My own theory is that Bax needs to have written at least one truly outstanding symphony, rather than seven broadly similar ones, none of which ever get a look in when concerts are being programmed. If one of them is to step up to the plate, as it were, then the strongest case could probably be made for the third.

This symphony was hugely popular in Bax's lifetime. It was first performed at the Proms in 1930, the year after its composition, featured in each the six subsequent Proms seasons, then again in 1939, 1942 and 1944. And that was that; it hasn't been heard there in 73 years. Quite why it should have dropped off the British music radar so comprehensively is baffling. It is a magnificent work. An opening solo bassoon melody provides the thematic material for a huge 20-minute first movement of a mostly reflective nature. A beautiful slow movement that evokes images of the West Highlands of Scotland, where the symphony was written, follows. The real symphonic masterstroke though is the Finale, which is bright and optimistic at first, before giving way to an epilogue of indescribable beauty that elevates the piece another level. This really should be standard repertoire for British orchestras. 



Day 151

31 May 2017: Haydn – Symphony No. 82. 'The Bear' (1786)
In 1785, Josef Haydn was commissioned by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges (see Day 79), who was then the music director of the Concert de la Loge Olympique in Paris, to write six symphonies to be performed as part of their subscription series the following year. Now collectively known as the Paris Symphonies, they remain among Haydn's most popular works. Symphony no. 82 in C major was the first performed, although not the first composed, of the six, and is known as 'the Bear'. As usual, the nickname did not come from Haydn himself, but was given to it as a result of the bagpipe effect employed in the fourth movement. It was thought to resemble the music used in a popular form of street entertainment ... dancing bears. It was a different age.

Haydn had long since moved on from his Strum und Drang period, and this symphony is more typical of his court-pleasing output. There is a consummate ease to the writing throughout as one might expect from a composer now in his 54th year and widely revered throughout Europe. Haydn's speciality is his ability to occasionally pull out something unique in his symphonies – a gimmick, if you will – to make them memorable in some way, and the bagpipe drone effect in the fourth movement must have been quite startling to the late-eighteenth century audience. He certainly knew how to win over a crowd.


Saturday 27 May 2017

Days 144 – 147

Day 144

24 May 2017: : Panufnik – Sinfonia di Sfere (1975)
Andrzej Panufnik's fifth symphony, Sinfonia di Sfere (Symphony of Spheres) is a continuation of his work in the mid-seventies towards a musical syntax of his own. In this work he allies his note-cell based ideas to his fascination with geometric patterns and how they might permeate a large-scale musical structure. Although it is a single-movement work, there are six sections in which 'spheres' of Tempo, Harmony, Rhythm, Melody, Dynamics, and Structure are worked through as the symphony progresses. The circle influences every minute detail of Sinfonia di Sfere, even the percussionists are arranged around the platform in performance so that their sound constantly orbits the orchestra.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a huge fan of Panufnik. I have to say, however, that I find this, and the Sinfonia Mistica that followed it, rather dry and academic works that I seldom listen to. There is a dazzling section for percussion that leaps out of the otherwise surprisingly flat musical landscape, demonstrating the skills he learned as a percussion student in his youth. This a rare highlight though, and I find it is best to view this as a study of sorts, in which Panufnik was learning how to speak in his new language.



Day 145

25 May 2017: Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 3 (1875)
Exactly 100 years before the Panufnik symphony featured yesterday, we have the third symphony written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It is unique among Tchaikovsky's symphonic output in two respects: it is the only one in a major key and also the only one to have five movements. Generally referred to as the 'Polish Symphony', the name doesn't actually originate from Tchaikovsky, but was given to it seemingly in around 1899 and in any event several years after the composer had died. The basis for the nickname is the marking Tempo di polacca in the Finale.

The additional fifth movement is an Alla tedesca, that occurs between the first movement and the rather lovely Andante elegiaco slow movement. This actually gives the symphony a rather pleasing symmetry, which makes one wonder why more composers didn't adopt the habit. On the whole, it is a really strong work. The usually self-critical Tchaikovsky himself seems to have been quite pleased with it, writing to Rimsky-Korsakov that 'As far as I am concerned ... in craftsmanship it is a step forward'. As a transitional work between the folk-music influenced early symphonies and the titanic works that were to follow, it does represent a move in the right direction.



Day 146

26 May 2017: Adams – Doctor Atomic Symphony (2007)
Dating from just ten years ago, this is the newest symphony I've featured so far. The work is fashioned from his opera Doctor Atomic, which is based on the Manhattan Project, consequently the bulk of the music was actually composed two years earlier. Sections of the overture as well as various instrumental sections and arias were formed into a symphonic work that originally ran to 45 minutes, but in its final form is about half that duration.

The common perception of John Adams is of a minimalist composer, and while that may have been the case in the early stages of his career, it scarcely applies now. There is none of the tiresome minimalist repetition here, in fact the first movement is surprisingly atonal, while the lyricism of the final movement (an orchestral setting of the Batter My Heart aria, sung by Oppenheimer from the end of Act One of the opera) is the finest piece of melodic writing I've ever heard from Adams. Hearing new composers is one aspect of this adventure I'm enjoying, but discovering different facets of composers I was already acquainted with is equally pleasurable.



Day 147

27 May 2017: D'Indy – Symphonie sur un chant montagnard français (Symphonie cévenole) for piano and orchestra (1886)
Rather like Roger Sessions, who I featured on Day 27, Vincent d'Indy is arguably more famous for the composers he taught than for any of his own work. As founder of the Schola Cantorum in Paris, he taught, among others, Isaac Albéniz, Arthur Honegger, Albéric Magnard, Darius Milhaud, Cole Porter, and Erik Satie. And yet, of the 100+ compositions of his own that have an opus number, no more than a handful are performed regularly today.

This work, Symphony on a French Mountain Air, is comfortably the most well-known item in his oeuvre. That said, I've certainly never heard this before, in fact I'm fairly sure I've never heard anything by d'Indy. I really enjoyed it, however. It is very much a symphony for piano and orchestra as opposed to a piano concerto, with the piano being treated as an extra layer in the orchestration rather than soloisticly. The tone of the work is set with a statement of the air on the cor anglais, and over its three movements a series of variations rediscover the theme at the end of the symphony. It's a lusciously scored and quite sumptuous piece and, if typical of his work in general, then I may be tempted to delve a little deeper. Not the snappiest title ever though, it has to be said.


Tuesday 23 May 2017

Days 137 – 143

Day 137

17 May 2017: Glenn Branca – Symphony No. 13 (Hallucination City) for 100 Guitars (2000)
Well this is certainly a bit different. American composer Glenn Branca often uses electric guitars as the basis for composition, although he has also written for conventional orchestra. For this symphony, written in the year 2000, the initial hope was to gather an ensemble of 2,000 guitarists. He eventually scaled it down to a still-quite-mighty 100 guitarists and it was first performed at the foot of the World Trade Centre the following year, just three months before they were destroyed in a terrorist attack.

I can't pretend it's a wholly enjoyable listen. The work begins promisingly enough with a steadily building crescendo over an insistent march rhythm in the percussion, eventually reaching a peak of almost white noise as the full battery of such a mass of heavily amplified guitars is unleashed. Unfortunately though, there's only so much of that sound one can listen to before tiring of it, and that's less than ideal for a work that lasts well over an hour. In the inner movements especially, I wished for some kind of light and shade or aural shaping instead of just unrelenting dissonance. It was still an interesting diversion sitting between Dvorák and Rachmaninov!



Day 138

18 May 2017: Rachmaninov – Symphony No. 1 (1895)
There is some truth in the phrase 'no pain, no gain', and there is a school of thought that if Sergei Rachmaninov hadn't been subjected to some of the most brutal criticism ever heaped on one symphony in the history of music, he might have been a very different composer. The failure of this symphony led almost directly to the triumph of his second piano concerto, although it was probably a route he himself would rather not have taken. The disastrous first performance of this work was largely attributable to the conductor Alexander Glazunov, who was reportedly drunk and indisputably incompetent. As a result, it was savaged by the critics, some of whom may have allowed a St Petersburg–Moscow rivalry to impair their judgement, and Rachmaninov consequently suffered a complete psychological collapse. His depression lasted three years, and after a course of psychotherapy, he eventually began composing again, with the aforementioned Piano Concerto No. 2 being the first major work he produced following this symphony.

The composer is alleged to have destroyed the score, and it wasn't performed again in his lifetime. It only exists at all because the orchestral parts were discovered the year after his death, from which the full score could be reconstructed. Many people view this as Rachmaninov's greatest symphony, which is praise indeed given the popularity of No. 2. I don't think I would go that far, although it is a wonderful piece. There are long sections where the music seems introverted, almost as though composer is talking to himself, although that does give the work an intimate feel. One thing is for sure, and that is the criticism it received at the time was thoroughly undeserved.



Day 139

19 May 2017: Louise Farrenc – Symphony No. 2 (1846)
Louise Farrenc occupies a very unique place in French music. Aside from the obvious fact of her gender, she was one of very few French composers writing symphonies in the 1840s. If she was aware of the work of Hector Berlioz in the previous decade, she certainly chose not to follow in his footsteps. Instead, she allied herself very firmly to the Germanic tradition, to such an extent that if someone had told me this was middle-period Mendelssohn, I would have had no reason to doubt them.

The most obvious model for this symphony is actually Beethoven's second symphony, also in D major, with the opening couple of minutes bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Beethoven. It soon develops a life of its own, however, with Farrenc's French accent cutting through the music from time to time. It's all very enjoyable, but it has to be said, a little backward-looking for the mid-19th century.



Day 140

20 May 2017: Valentin Silvestrov – Symphony No. 4 (1976)
I only discovered Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov very recently, and as a consequence I've been trying to shuffle my Symphony A Day schedule (yes, this is all planned out months in advance) to try and squeeze in a few more of his works. Like a number of post-war composers, he began his career writing in a modernist style, but after a period out of the limelight in the mid-seventies Silvestrov reinvented himself as a neo-classicist and this is one of the earliest work from this second period.

I really like this piece a lot. The harmonic language is rich and conforms to the belief that I always adhered to in my pitiful attempts at composition: that dissonance is just one of the many colours available on the composer's pallete. This is music that speaks to me directly somehow, and some of the writing is truly sublime. There is a theme for a smaller string ensemble, which appears to have parachuted in from a Renaissance work for viols, that first appears around the eight-minute mark, and the effect is absolutely breathtaking. Likewise, the final five minutes is an extraordinary pianissimo of barely audible melodic fragments fading away to nothing. Absolutely stunning – I don't think I can recommend this symphony highly enough.



Day 141

21 May 2017: Mozart – Symphony No. 31, 'Paris' (1778)
In 1777, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart left the security of the Salzburg court and set out to Paris in search of employment. During his time at Salzburg, Mozart wrote 17 of his numbered symphonies (the 'Salzburg Symphonies') in just over three years. Symphony No. 31 is the first of Mozart's late-period symphonies, and as such are considered his more mature works. It was written for an unusually large orchestra, causing Mozart's father Leopold to comment that 'the French must like noisy symphonies'.

The work was specifically written for a French audience while Mozart was embarking upon his ultimately unsuccessful attempt to seek employment there. The symphony was deemed a success, however, and was performed many times in the years after its composition. Unusually, it has three movements, with the central Andante in 3/4 having replaced a 6/8 Andantino that was seemingly not well received at the first performance. Possibly because of his failure to gain employment there, Mozart appears to have developed some contempt for the French, writing 'I hope that even these idiots will find something in it to like'. I think we all can.



Day 142

22 May 2017: Rubbra – Symphony No. 4 (1942)
Edmund Rubbra's fourth symphony was written during World War II, and at the time, the composer was stationed at an army camp in North Wales. There is something of the 'Keep Calm and Carry On' spirit about the fact that Rubbra was somehow expected to not only compose the work while there was a war on, but also conduct the first performance at the Proms in August 1942. Even that seemingly immovable commitment required some delicate negotiations with his army superiors; in the end, he conducted the première in army uniform.

That Rubbra should produce arguably his finest work under such circumstances is testament to the man. In his second symphony (see Day 33), we heard him approach its composition as a huge exercise in contrapuntal writing. Here, it is clear right from the outset that the method is completely different. An insistent rhythm in the woodwinds and horn pulses under ethereal chords in divided strings, creating a quite unique aural landscape. In typical Rubbra style, the music simply gradually evolves from that terrain, eschewing any traditional formal restrictions. The first movement dominates the work, and is roughly equal in length to the movements that follow it combined, with the third and fourth effectively two halves of the same movement (the third is entitled Introduzione), again demonstrating Rubbra innate sense of form and balance. Everything, about this symphony is wholly satisfying.



Day 143

23 May 2017: Schubert – Symphony No. 4 (1816)
Franz Schubert named this symphony Tragische (Tragic) for seemingly no other reason than that it is in a minor key. The best potential reason put forward for the title is that Schubert had recently been unsuccessful in applying for a post at a German language school in Ljubljana. What is tragic is the fact that none of Schubert's symphonies were performed in his lifetime, with this one not actually seeing the light of day until 1849, almost 21 years to the day after his death. Quite what motivated the 19-year-old Schubert to compose so many works on this scale with no apparent prospect of hearing them publicly performed is something of a mystery.

The work opens with a gesture very similar to the start of Haydn's Creation, and in entitling the symphony 'Tragic', Schubert does seem to consciously connect with the Sturm und Drang ethos beloved of Haydn. From then on though, Schubert adopts Beethovenian models of thematic unity between movements, and some have observed the similarity between the opening theme of this symphony and that of Beethoven's Op. 14 No. 4 string quartet. The symphony contains one of the greatest symphonic slow movements Schubert ever wrote, although the throwaway Menuetto is something of a let-down after it. This is Schubert at his most serious and shows his growing maturity as a composer.


Tuesday 16 May 2017

Days 131 – 136

Day 131

11 May 2017: Hindemith – Symphony: Mathis der Maler (1934)
I've listened to a lot of Hindemith's music in my life. As a result of having composed chamber music for just about every instrument ever invented, Hindemith has become the staple of the lunchtime concert. As my old university lecturer George Nicholson once observed in one of our composition classes, if you're looking for a piece of music for ocarina and bagpipes, then chances are Hindemith wrote one. Despite his prolific output, few of his orchestral works are concert regulars – arguably only this and his Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber are well-known.

This symphony attained a degree of notoriety in his native Germany, where his music had been denounced by the Nazis as 'degenerate'. It was fashioned out of music that he was composing for an opera of the same name, and although the opera was completed the following year, it could not be performed in Germany due to its themes of artistic freedom being at odds with Nazi ideology. The painter of the title is 16th century German artist Matthias Grünewald, and the symphony is specifically inspired by his Isenheim Altarpiece, which is an elaborate structure of folding panels revealing different tableaux. Each of the three movements is based one of the altarpiece's panels, with the contrasting outer movements surrounding a serene portrayal of Christ's entombment – depicted at the base of the altarpiece. It's a quite original work that seems to embrace Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk ethos, with its stimulus coming from the visual arts and its ultimate destination being opera.



Day 132

12 May 2017: Schumann – Symphony No. 2 (1847)
Robert Schumann's second symphony – or third if you count them in order of actual composition – is a quite remarkable piece of art. At the time he wrote it, he was suffering from a debilitating array of ailments, such as nausea and insomnia, and was generally in constant pain. His incapacitation was compounded by a constant ringing in the ears we can probably now attribute to tinnitus, all of which left him suffering from depression. The fact that he was able to sit down and write such an uplifting symphony as this is astonishing.

His illness and depression almost certainly contributed to his taking a different approach to the composition of this symphony. He inevitably worked slowly on it, which was at odds with his more standard approach as that of a miniaturist, writing almost spontaneously. The result is a finely crafted work, conceived on a much grander scale than its rather more piecemeal predecessor.

By the way, if you rewind the YouTube video linked below back to the beginning, you can see that Katie Derham's faux pas in telling the watching Proms audience that Schumann wrote nine symphonies has been recorded for posterity!



Day 133

13 May 2017: Koechlin – The Seven Stars' Symphony (1933)
French composer Charles Koechlin's tribute to the movie stars of the day was the second composition to which he gave the title 'Symphony', although his next example of the genre was given the title Symphony No. 2. And to be honest this isn't really a symphony, rather more a suite, with each of its seven movements being based on a specific actor or actress. Specifically, they are, in turn, Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings, and Charlie Chaplin.

In some ways, it is reminiscent of Elgar's Enigma Variations in the way that the music conveys individual characters. So for the Emil Jannings movement, its full title is 'Choral for the repose of the soul of Professor Rath in The Blue Angel', and attempts tell the film's story in music form, rather in the way Elgar would paint a specific incident in the lives of his subjects. It is an absolutely charming work, with the final movement, Charlie Chaplin (variations on the theme of the letters of his name), which occupies about a third of the symphony's length, being the real highlight. The symphony also features a rare outing for the Ondes Martenot, most famously used in Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie.



Day 134

14 May 2017: Berlioz – Harold en Italie (1834)
Hector Berlioz's symphonic follow-up to his Symphonie fantastique is this rather more sober work. Part-concerto and part-symphonic poem, it is certainly no more conventional than its predecessor, but the scale and ambition of the piece has definitely been toned down a little. That it ended up being part-concerto is quite a tale in itself. So the story goes, Nicolo Paganini had acquired a new Stradivarius viola and approached Berlioz to write a work to showcase it. Rather than write a straight concerto, Berlioz instead decided to write a more orchestral work that featured a viola obbligato. When Paganini saw the work and realised that the viola wasn't going to be quite the star of the show he'd anticipated, he rejected it out of hand. The two were eventually reconciled some years later when Paganini went to hear it performed, with the famed violinist kissing Berlioz's hand on stage and subsequently (and belatedly) paying the composer 20,000 francs for the work he had effectively commissioned.

The work was inspired by Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, with the viola playing the part of Harold. The four movements each depict a scene from the poem, with the first movement referring to Harold in the mountains, and the second, a slow movement, sees Harold accompanying a group of Pilgrims. Rather like the Symphonie fantastique, there is a wild finale – in this case an Orgy of Brigands – but it has to be said that having pulled out all the stops in the earlier work there's already a feeling of Berlioz having nowhere left to go in this symphony. It remains a popular piece though, not least among violists who aren't exactly blessed when it comes to solo repertoire written for them.



Day 135

15 May 2017: Brian – Symphony No. 18 (1961)
Although nearly 35 years had passed since Havergal Brian wrote his infamous Gothic Symphony (see Day 50), his Symphony No. 18 was actually written in the year of the Gothic's premiere. The monumental effort required to stage a work requiring several hundred performers did not go unrecognised by the composer, as Brian wrote this symphony as an act of gratitude to Bryan Fairfax, the conductor of the 1961 premiere in Central Hall, Westminster.

Brian was already 85 years old when he wrote this symphony, and incredibly he would go on to write another 14 in the remaining 11 years of his life. The excesses of the Gothic had long been cast aside by this stage of his life, and with a total running time of around 15 minutes, it is barely one-eighth of the length of that first symphonic adventure. The musical language and forces employed are, understandably, far more conventional. Even so, it's unlikely that this was ever performed in his lifetime. The dedicatee conducted a performance two years after Brian's death, a recording of which was pirated and released by the Aries label who attributed the performance to the fictional 'Wales Symphony Orchestra, conductor Colin Wilson' (an error perpetuated in the YouTube link below). In common with virtually all of Brian's output, this symphony is very rarely heard, but it's still an impressive effort for a gentleman of advanced years.
  


Day 136

16 May 2017: Dvorák – Symphony No. 4 (1874)
Antonin Dvorák's fourth symphony shares a key – D minor – with his seventh, and as a consequence the pair are sometimes referred to as the 'Little' and the 'Great'. It's not entirely obvious why, given that both symphonies are about the same length, and in terms of orchestration the only additional forces required for the seventh are a triangle and a harp!

After a rather uncertain start his symphonic career, Dvorák was on rather more secure footing when he wrote this. Ironically, having laboured to find his own voice in his earlier somewhat derivative works, this symphony carries very clear Wagnerian influences – another reason why the 'Little' tag is quite inappropriate. There are clear echoes of Tannhäuser in the slow movement, which is a set of variations on a theme seemingly lifted from the Wagner opera. The scherzo is also particularly strong, having previous existed as a standalone piece. In fact, it's a symphony that as a whole suffers by comparison to Dvorák's later and more popular ones, and not through any lack of quality.