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.