29 August 2017:
Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 4, 'Italian' (1833)
Felix Mendelssohn's
enduringly popular fourth symphony was actually the third he composed, but was
published four years after his death as Symphony
No. 4. The young Mendelssohn had toured Italy a couple of years earlier,
and began composing the work while he was still in the country. It was hugely
successful at its premiere and has remained a concert favourite ever since,
with its joyous and breezy nature endearing itself to audiences for nearly 200
years. Even as he was writing it, Mendelssohn remarked that it would "be
the jolliest piece I have ever done". And yet it was a work that he was,
by all accounts, unhappy with when he completed it, causing him to revise the
piece at least once and withhold it from publication in his lifetime.
The first movement is
one of the most instantly recognisable in the symphonic canon, featuring a
lively and bouncy first subject for violins that, once heard, is never
forgotten. The serene slow movement, probably depicting a Neapolitan religious
procession he observed, is followed by a graceful minuet where one might have expected a scherzo. Unusually, for a symphony in major key, the final movement
is in the tonic minor and depicts the folk dances of southern Italy,
specifically the saltarello and the tarantella. It happens to be my
daughter's favourite symphony, probably due to its extensive use in a favourite
DVD from her childhood, Barbie in the 12
Dancing Princesses!
For a work that isn't
exactly a regular on the concert platform, a surprisingly high number of people
I know regard Arthur Honegger's third symphony as one of their favourite
pieces. It's certainly one of mine, and I wish it were better known than it
is. It was written immediately after World War II, and was Honegger's direct
response to the horrors of the conflict. It's interesting to compare this with
another third symphony written a fellow-member of Les Six in the same year –
Milhaud's 'Te Deum' Symphony (see Day73). Whereas Milhaud's choral symphony is a stirring victory song, Honegger
aims to depict the brutality and aggression of war culminating in a far more
reflective conclusion. And just as Milhaud turned to liturgical texts, so did Honegger,
although he merely used them as movement titles for a purely orchestral work,
rather in the same way that Britten had done for his earlier Sinfonia da Requiem (see Day 63).
Honegger went to the
trouble of describing the meaning of each movement. The opening Dies Irae is "human terror" in
the form of a "rapid succession of violent themes", while the central
movement De profundis clamavi depicts
"the painful meditation of man forsaken by divinity". The finale, Dona nobis pacem, is in two parts:
initially a heavy-footed march leading to "rebellion dawning in the ranks
of the victims" before "a song of peace soars above the symphony as
the dove soared in the old days above the immensity of the ocean." That
soaring song of peace, which occupies the last three minutes or so of the
composition is, to my mind, one of the finest symphonic endings I've heard,
especially after the tempestuous nature of all that has gone before.
Day 243
31 August 2017:
Tchaikovsky – Manfred Symphony (1885)
Sitting between his
fourth and fifth symphonies, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky produced this unnumbered,
programmatic symphony based on Lord Byron's poem Manfred. At nearly an hour in length, it is comfortably his
longest, and this fact probably contributes more than anything to its comparative
rarity as a concert piece. That said, it has featured in the four of the last
eight Proms seasons, and in the latest of my series of Proms tie-ins, I decided
to listen to the BBC Symphony Orchestra's performance of this at this evening's
Prom.
Tonight's conductor,
Semyon Bychkov, described this as 'an opera without words', which I thought was
a very apt description. Programme symphonies are difficult to pull off, as when
the form is dictated by the narrative of the text rather than established musical
structures, it can lead to imbalanced or episodic music that is decidedly un-symphonic.
Generally, they work best when they are an adaptation of a mood or scene, and
that is true of the inner movements of this symphony. The second movement scherzo has nothing more to describe
than an Alpine fairy appearing from the spray of a waterfall, and the music is
suitably spritely and skittish. The third movement Andante con moto, a depiction of the simple life of the mountain
folk, is particularly gorgeous and certainly benefits from being free of any
programmatic considerations. The same cannot be said of the rather aimless,
twenty-minute-long final movement, however. Tchaikovsky's innate ability as a
tunesmith sustains the interest throughout though, with the symphony's idée fixe – a device taken from
Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, this
work's clearest model – being especially strong. I think it's a good, but a
great, symphony.
It's no good. Much as
I would like to try to get through an item on an Edmund Rubbra symphony without
resorting to the words 'scandalously neglected', it is simply unavoidable in
this case. I am at a complete loss to explain why this is as rarely heard as it
unquestionably is. Its premiere in 1957 was conducted by no less a figure than
Andrzej Panufnik, who was musical director of the City of Birmingham Symphony
Orchestra at the time. For their 1956-57 season, the CBSO had commissioned new
works from Tippett, who produced his brilliant Piano Concerto, Bliss, who wrote his Meditation on a Theme of John Blow, and Rubbra, who delivered this
masterpiece. It's fair to say the good folk of Birmingham got their money's
worth!
The third movement – a
Passacaglia and Fugue – is exquisite,
and while there is much to love in Rubbra's symphonic output, this particular
movement is the gleaming diamond in his musical crown. My old music lecturer at
Keele, Stephen Banfield, asserted in his book on Gerald Finzi that this
movement was Rubbra's tribute to his close friend and fellow-composer who died
while he was composing the symphony. It's hard to conceive of a more moving
response. I listened to this today and, as the music ended, I felt an
overwhelming compulsion to personally visit the musical directors of our great
orchestras and interrogate them as to why this music seemingly never even enters
their minds when considering programmes.
Day 234
22 August 2017:
Schubert – Symphony No. 6 (1818)
There is a convention
of sorts when composers write two symphonies in the same key to refer to the
smaller (and usually earlier) of the two works as the 'Little "n"
major/minor'. So we have Mozart's 'Little G minor' (see Day 86), Dvorak's
'Little D minor' (see Day 136), and this, Franz Peter Schubert's 'Little C
major'. This is unquestionably the little brother to the 'Great C major', his
ninth symphony, which is nearly twice the length of this one.
Many commentators have
detected an Italian influence in this symphony. The finale takes a theme from
his own Two Overtures in the Italian Style,
the second movement Andante seems to
have the feel of a tarantella, while
the use of musical themes associated with street festivals has been attributed
to the influence of Rossini. There's a general lightness of feel throughout,
which actually reminded me of Mendelssohn's fourth 'Italian' symphony composed
some ten years later. Sadly, Schubert never heard this in his lifetime. The
irony is that this brightest of symphonies only received its first performance
at a concert to commemorate Schubert's death in 1828.
Day 235
23 August 2017: Louise
Farrenc – Symphony No. 3 (1847)
Even in today's more
enlightened times, there is still an element of sexism within the music
business, as can be evidenced by the relatively small presence of female
composers in many orchestra's programmes. One can only imagine, therefore, what
it was like in Louise Farrenc's time. Here was a significant figure in
mid-nineteenth-century French music; Professor of Piano at the Paris
Conservatoire for fully 30 years, a gifted performer, and a highly talented
composer. Nonetheless, her abilities as a composer were not taken seriously,
and the logistical difficulties of assembling an orchestra to perform her works
meant they went largely unheard in her own lifetime.
I featured Farrenc's
second symphony a few months ago (see Day 139) and had to admit that I didn't
really enjoy it, due to it being simply too derivative of earlier composers. I
have no such qualms with this her final, and arguably best, symphony. From the
mysterious woodwind opening, it is clear that there's a more self-confident
composer at work, and it soon develops into a robust and beautifully
orchestrated Allegro. There is, it
has to be said, a Beethovenian feel to the Adagio
cantabile slow movement, but it is no less wonderful for that, and the fast
and furious Scherzo is a display of
effortless brilliance. Unfortunately, concert tickets are usually sold on the
basis of the names of the composers on the programme, and until Farrenc breaks
that particular barrier, she is sadly likely to remain obscure.
Day 236
24 August 2017: Weill
– Symphony No. 2 (1934)
Kurt Weill is so well
known for his music for the stage that many people will perhaps be unaware of
his credentials as a composer of more conventional classical music. He studied
composition first with Engelbert Humperdinck (no, not that one) and then
Ferruccio Busoni, and included the likes of Stravinsky and Berg among his
admirers. The year before Weill wrote this symphony, he had fled to Paris
following the rise to power of the Nazis in his native Germany, and had seen
his most famous work, The Threepenny
Opera, premiered on Broadway. Although that closed after just 13
performances, it was clear that Weill saw his future in musical theatre and his
second symphony turned out to be his last orchestral work before he
concentrated on writing for the stage
I was one of the many
unaware of this period of his career and I'd go so far as to say that if I'd
been played this blind and asked to guess the composer, Kurt Weill would have
been about guess number 572. It does have a connection to his earlier stage
work Rise and Fall of the City of
Mahagonny, in that one of its numbers, Denn
wie man sich bettet, so liegt man, is the model of the first movement's
lyrical second subject – albeit rather more symphonically treated. It's clear
from this that Weill was a perfectly good symphonist, but he soon realised it
doesn't pay the rent.
Day 237
25 August 2017: Walton
– Symphony No. 2 (1960)
The William Walton who
presented his second symphony to the world as a 58-year-old elder statesman of
English music was a rather different creature to the enfant terrible of 25 years earlier, when he composed his first.
While the earlier work was considered quite cutting-edge and modernist, this
symphony was very harshly treated by the critics of the day, who tended to view
him as rather old-fashioned at a time when the burgeoning Manchester School of
composers – Goehr, Maxwell Davies, and Birtwistle – were changing the country's
musical landscape.
The criticism was
unfair of course, and as a consequence the symphony has been viewed for a long
time as a poor relation to the first, rather in the same way Elgar's second
used to be perceived. Just as the Elgar has started to be appreciated anew in
recent years, so the Walton is long overdue a re-appraisal. It's a more
sophisticated work than its predecessor, certainly better orchestrated,
although it lacks the sheer brute force of the first. The final movement is a
brilliant set of variations on a twelve-note tone row, although it is by no means
a serialist work. Had Walton written this within a few years of his first
symphony it would probably have been much better received. The prejudices that
coloured its reception nearly sixty years ought not to permanently damage its
legacy.
Day 238
26 August 2017:
Britten – Cello Symphony (1963)
Benjamin Britten is a
permanent fixture in my top five composers of all-time. He wrote for so many
different genres that his contribution to the symphonic repertoire is often
overlooked, but I find it fascinating. He wrote four, none of them numbered, and
all very different from each other. His Simple
Symphony, Sinfonia Da Requiem,
and Spring Symphony I have already
featured, and this was the final work to which he attributed the name
'symphony'. And while the first three were a work for string orchestra based on
juvenilia themes, a conventional orchestral piece in three movements, and a
choral symphony respectively, here Britten experiments with the form again by
writing a symphony with a prominent part for a solo cello. It was composed for
his friend Mstislav Rostropovich, who premiered the work.
Britten decided to
call this piece a symphony rather than a concerto (having also considered the
title Sinfonia Concertante) as he
believed the solo and orchestral parts to be of equal weight. Certainly the
structure is conventionally symphonic, with a sonata form opening movement,
followed by a Scherzo and an Adagio, although the cadenza with which the latter concludes
is the one flaw in the symphony argument. The final movement is the crowning
glory of the work. Britten did like a Passacaglia;
there are fine examples in his Violin
Concerto, in the opera Peter Grimes,
and his Nocturnal for guitar, among
others. The use of this traditional Renaissance construct here is a perfect way
to conclude a work that plays with one's preconceptions of traditional forms.
Day 239
27 August 2017:
Silvestrov – Symphony No. 5 (1982)
Of all the new composers
I've discovered this year as part of my Symphony A Day venture, I think
Valentin Silvestrov is probably my favourite. Still going strong and
approaching his 80th birthday, Silvestrov has written eight symphonies, the
most recent of which emerged four years ago. In common with many
late-twentieth-century composers, Silvestrov started out writing music of a
modernist nature although his change to a more consonant approach was
originally out of necessity following criticism from the Soviet authorities.
The style he developed, largely in private having withdrawn public life, was a
neo-Romantic idiom of flowing, delicate lyricism.
He was awarded
Ukraine's Shevchenko National Prize for Music in 1995, and this symphony, which
by then was thirteen years old, was one of three pieces cited. It really is a
lovely piece. For the most part, it moves at serene, glacial speed. There are
echoes of Mahler's ninth and tenth symphonies in the string writing at the
beginning and end of the work, as if their music has been refracted through a
late twentieth-century prism. Silvestrov is possibly unique in that he wears
his influences so visibly, yet produces work of great uniqueness. It would be
nice to hear his work more often in this country.
Day 240
28 August 2017:
Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 6 (1947)
Fewer things could
indicate just how popular Ralph Vaughan Williams was at this point in his
career than the astonishing fact that this work received over 100 performances
worldwide within two years of its premiere. It is probably his most
misunderstood symphony, even more so than the enigmatic Pastoral Symphony (see Day 120). The fact that it was written in
the immediate aftermath of World War II, its discordant musical language, and
its desolate final movement led many critics to assume – quite wrongly – that
it was RVW's reaction to the conflict. Vaughan Williams refuted this, memorably
replying, 'It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to
write a piece of music.'
The first movement
sees a return to the abrasive language of his fourth symphony, although the
contrasting, lyrical second subject is more akin to his folk-tinged earlier
works. Incidentally, this tune was used as the theme music for the 1970s ITV
series A Family At War. The
extraordinary second movement features a five-note rhythm that is repeated
insistently, as many as 90 times, building to a quite terrifying crescendo,
while the third movement, with its sleazy saxophone solo, appears to mock
dance-hall music of the time. Eventually, however, this collapses into the cold
and bleak Epilogue, marked pianissimo throughout, that is quite
unlike any movement in British music to that point. What makes this highly
original, and in many ways groundbreaking symphony all the more remarkable, is
that Vaughan Williams was 74 years old when he wrote this. There was clearly
life in the old dog yet.
13 August 2017:
Rachmaninov – Symphony No. 2 (1907)
That Sergei
Rachmaninov actually wrote a second symphony is a triumph over adversity
possibly unequalled in music. His first (see Day 138) had been subjected to
wilfully brutal criticism by almost everyone who felt compelled to document
their opinion of the poorly performed premiere. Rachmaninov suffered depression
and a full psychological breakdown as a direct consequence, and barely wrote a
note of music for three years afterwards. Having written his hugely popular
second piano concerto in the intervening twelve years since the disastrous
first, Rachmaninov was still plagued by doubt over this work, and revised it
repeatedly before releasing it into the wild.
It has, of course,
become one of his most successful compositions, and indeed one of the most frequently
performed symphonies in the whole late-Romantic repertoire. It features in
tonight's all-Rachmaninov programme at the BBC Proms, performed by the BBC
Scottish Symphony Orchestra, so that meant a return of the Proms tie-in, whereby
I aim to listen to that particular performance (which was rather difficult to
co-ordinate as I was in Prague at the time). It's one of the few symphonies to
have inspired a pop song, with the third movement Adagio having been lifted by Eric Carmen for his minor 1976 hit Never Gonna Fall in Love Again. Carmen
must have been quite the Rachmaninov fan, as this was in turn a follow-up to
the global hit All by Myself, which
ripped off the second piano concerto. It has to be said that the symphony as we
now recognise it has only in recent years run to the full hour of music that
Rachmaninov originally wrote. For most of its performance history it was
presented in a savagely cut state, with edits approved by the composer
sometimes reducing its length to around 40 minutes. Thankfully we now hear it
in all its glory and the work is all the better for it.
Day 226
14 August 2017: Mozart
– Symphony No. 35, 'Haffner' (1782)
This symphony had a
far more interesting life than most of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's earlier works.
For the most part, Mozart wrote to order, usually quite quickly, for a specific
performance and then moved on to the next piece. It is questionable he would
ever intend such works to be heard again. This, however, was a symphony fashioned
from earlier music: a serenade he had written for the ennoblement of Sigmund
Haffner the Younger five months earlier. The six-movement serenade was,
according to a letter he wrote to his father at the time, written over almost
as many nights whilst working on his opera The
Abduction from the Seraglio during the day!
When, in December of
1782, Mozart decided to present a concert of his music, he revisited this earlier
music – essentially dropping two of its six movements, a march and a minuet –
and formed it into the symphony we know today. The said concert was a bit of an
oddity: the first three movements of the 'Haffner' symphony opened proceedings,
and then after some of his arias, a couple of his piano concertos, and various
other items, the finale of the symphony concluded the concert. In keeping with
many symphonies of the time, it begins with a loud, unison theme, which
effectively served the purpose of silencing the crowd. The opening movement is
a conventional sonata form, while the Presto
finale makes use of a theme from the aria Ha,
wie will ich triumphieren from the opera he was working on at the same
time, The Abduction from the Seraglio.
A rare example of symphonic material that re-uses music already re-used before!
Day 227
15 August 2017:
Schumann – Symphony No. 3, 'Rhenish' (1850)
I admitted, when
featuring Robert Schumann's first symphony back in February (see Day 38), that
he was a composer I rarely listened to. So when this one cropped up on the
schedule, to tie in with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra's performance of it at
tonight's BBC Prom, I thought I probably should know it, but couldn't recall
anything about it. As soon as the first bars were played, however, a welcome
spark of recognition occurred that made me wonder why I'd neglected it for so
long.
It's a marvellous
symphony, somewhat at odds with the circumstances surrounding its composition.
The Schumann family had recently moved to Düsseldorf, as Robert had taken up
the role of the city’s Music Director. Their new apartment was in the centre of
the city and, by all accounts, noisy, which meant Schumann's attempts at composition
were constantly disrupted. According to his wife Clara this caused her husband
a form of 'house rage'. Nevertheless, his response to his new surroundings in
the Rhineland was to pour out this joyous work, with the tone set from the off
with a majestic opening theme. I happened to be travelling from Prague to
Bayreuth today, and listening to this with the German landscape as a backdrop –
albeit Franconia rather than North Rhine-Westphalia – suited the music
perfectly. I think it may be time for me to bring Schumann back in from the
wilderness to which I've dispatched him.
Day 228
16 August 2017: Balakirev
– Symphony No. 2 (1908)
I didn't really do
Mily Balakirev any favours by scheduling this for today. His second symphony is
the lesser well-known of his pair, and certainly not one I'd ever heard before.
Unfortunately, I ended up listening to this 50 minutes of totally unfamiliar music
shortly after returning to our gasthof
in Bayreuth after spending the previous six hours attending Tristan und Isolde at the Festspielhaus.
After that, anything would have been an anti-climax, so poor old Balakirev was
onto a hiding to nothing. Anyway, I decided to do the decent thing and give it
a second listen on our flight back to the UK a couple of days later.
Rather like Stanford
in this country, Balakirev is arguably more famous for who he influenced than
anything else – in this case, his protégé Tchaikovsky. His own music has not
been treated well by history, and the fact that the supposedly better-known
first symphony (see Day 49) is rarely performed outside Russia to this day,
gives an indication of how far below the waves thus has sunk. He was 71 when
this symphony was completed, and after taking over 30 years to complete his
first, this one was knocked out in a comparatively cursory eight years. It
opens with two quite startling chords that rather threw me off balance,
sounding for all the world like the final two chords of another work. The
second movement is a scherzo marked alla Cosacca, and its Cossack style
would have been entirely in keeping with the Russian art form he and the rest
of The Five were attempting to create. This would also be true of the final
movement Polonaise, which was
actually a form more associated with Imperial Russia than Poland. I'm afraid
the second listen didn't really raise my opinion of the symphony much, however,
and it's unlikely ever to receive a third.
Day 229
17 August 2017: Lalo –
Symphonie espagnole (1874)
Yes, I know it's a
violin concerto really, but according the rules that I set out on day one,
Édouard Lalo chose to call this a symphony, ergo it qualifies. Also, it meant I
could incorporate a third Proms tie-in this week, as it features in tonight's
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra prom, with Joshua Bell as soloist. As a symphony,
it doesn't really fit the template, but then again, as a five-movement work, it
isn't a conventional concerto either. In fact, Lalo had written his Violin Concerto for the same soloist,
the famed Spaniard Pablo de Sarasate, the previous year. That he chose not to
call this 'Violin Concerto No. 2' is indicative of its different conception.
French composers of
the day appear to have had a fascination with the music of their Iberian
neighbours. Bizet wrote Carmen around
this time, Chabrier produced his rhapsody for orchestra España the following decade, and Ravel would draw upon it
repeatedly for Bolero, Rapsodie espagnole, and his one-act
opera L'heure espagnole in years to
come. The Spanish inflections in the music are very prominent throughout,
especially in the second movement Scherzando.
There are virtuosic fireworks throughout and the work has rightly become a
concert favourite, although it is probably the only work by Lalo I could name
off the top of my head.
Day 230
18 August 2017:
Stamitz – Mannheim Symphony No. 3 in B flat major (c. 1741)
Over the (checks) 230
days that I've doing this Symphony A Day thing, I've pondered on whether I may
have done a few things differently. The one thing I might have changed, had I
really thought it through rather than just deciding on a whim on the morning of
1 January to do this, is that I could have run the symphonies in chronological
order to show how the genre developed over the centuries. Had I done so, this
would have featured in the first week of January as one of the earliest
examples of the genre.
I find it fascinating
that Stamitz was writing this fledgling classical symphony at around the same
time as Handel was writing the Messiah,
and JS Bach produced his second book of Preludes and Fugues, The Well-Tempered Clavier. It's
groundbreaking stuff, with a recognisable sonata-form first movement, a stately
Andante central movement, and a
lively Presto finale in triple time –
all of which would influence Haydn in following decades. At around eight minutes in length, it is one
of the shortest symphonies I've heard this year but this is very much the tiny
acorn from which symphonic form grew.
Day 231
19 August 2017:
Pettersson – Symphony No. 9 (1970)
I featured Allan
Pettersson's 7th symphony a few months ago (see Day 116) and at the time he was
a relatively new discovery to me. He's rapidly becoming one of my favourite
composers and this is seen by many as the pinnacle of his symphonic output
(which amounts to 15 completed symphonies, and two further unfinished ones).
It's certainly the longest, running to 70 minutes in its slowest recorded
performance, and in common with most of his other symphonies it consists of a
single through-composed movement.
Quite often, when I
encounter composers like Pettersson whose work is rarely performed outside of
his native country, I find myself questioning why their music is so
infrequently programmed. It's pretty easy to see why in Pettersson's case,
however. Seventy minutes of unbroken music is a big ask of any audience, and it
would be difficult see how anyone could confidently programme the work and
expect much of a crowd to turn up. This is a shame, as it's a work that manages
to sustain the listener's attention throughout, much of which is down to his
trademark device of sustaining pedal notes and repeated osinati figures for so long that you're almost pleading with him to
resolve them. When the music finally lands onto a quiet, restrained major chord
in the last 30 seconds the effect is astonishing. A great symphony, but one in
which Pettersson is clearly pushing the levels of audience tolerability. He was
hospitalised for nine months after writing this, and along with the demands the
ninth symphony had engendered, these two factors probably contributed to the
fact that his next symphony was only 25 minutes long.
Day 232
20 August 2017: Parry
– Symphony No. 4 (1889)
While Hubert Parry
achieved great popularity in his own lifetime, his symphonies started to
dwindle into obscurity almost as soon as each was written. Even as long ago as
1949, AEF Dickinson was writing an article in The Musical Times, entitled 'The Neglected Parry' bemoaning the
fact his music – Jerusalem aside –
was rarely performed. The situation has scarcely changed nearly 70 years on.
Take this work for
example. It is Parry's longest symphony, with my copy of London
Philharmonic/Matthias Bamert CD (that remains the only recording of the piece
in existence) clocking in at around 42 minutes. It was originally composed in
1889 and given one performance, after which Parry declared his dissatisfaction
with the work. In 1910 he revisited the symphony, padding out the orchestration
and writing a new scherzo. And while
this improved the work in the composer's eyes, it did little for its fortunes.
After a solitary performance of the revised version, it remained unheard for a
further 80 years until Bamert picked up the score for the aforementioned
recording in 1990. It is the first of Parry's symphonies to have been written
in a minor key, and this led him to concede that it was 'a bit stern'.
Personally I think its length and choice of key lends it a gravitas that sets
it above its predecessors. It's a view that even the composer himself doesn't
appear to have shared though.
7 August 2017: Górecki
– Symphony No. 2, 'Copernican' (1972)
In common with many
20th century composers, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki went through two very distinct
stylistic phases. Having started as a darling of the Polish avant-garde in the
mid-1950s, he later developed a much more consonant style and was bundled in with
the 'Holy Minimalists' following the bewildering success of his Symphony No. 3, 'Symphony of Sorrowful
Songs' in the early nineties. I can, however, think of very few examples of
symphonies that showcase both periods of a composer's development in a single
work, in the way that this does.
The title 'Copernican'
comes from the fact that the symphony was written to commemorate the 500th
anniversary of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus's birth in 1973 (although the
work was actually completed the previous year). It is in two wildly contrasting
parts. The first part, which represents the chaos of the world, features
massive, loud, dissonant whole-tone chords that span six octaves, and also fast
ad libitum passages for brass – very reminiscent of his compatriot Witold
Lutosławski. The second couldn't be more different, employing quieter, calmer
music based on the pentatonic scale, and occupying much the same sound world as
the third symphony. This represents the order of the universe, and features a
choir singing psalms from the Bible. Indeed, the last five minutes or so of
this work is so quiet as to be barely audible – leading me to think the piece
had finished long before it had! It is hugely important work in Górecki's
output, not only for the importance of the occasion for which it was written,
but also as it represents a summation of his career as a whole.
Day 220
8 August 2017: Kodály
– Symphony in C major (1961)
I've been amazed by
the number of symphonies I've discovered this year that had ridiculously long
gestation periods. The three decades it took Zoltán Kodály to complete this his
only symphony is certainly on the outer extremes of those examples. Kodály
started work on this in the 1930s, and after 15 years of what must have been
very intermittent work he had completed two movements. It may have remained in
that incomplete state for the rest of his life, however in 1959, following the
death of his wife of 48 years Emma Gruber, the 77-year-old Kodály married a
19-year-old student by the name of Sarolta Péczely. This seems to have
invigorated the old man, and he completed this symphony within a year.
AllMusic reviewer
Joseph Stevenson rates this as 'one of the greatest symphonies of the 20th
Century', although it is not a widely held belief. It is, nevertheless, a
splendid piece of work, and the culmination of a life devoted to the folk music
of his native Hungary. The folk-like themes are everywhere, with the opening
music featuring what appear to be open string drones in the manner of fiddle
tunes. The second Andante moderato
movement features a viola-led theme and variations that sounds for all the
world like his English counterpart Vaughan Williams at times. The final
movement, which as mentioned previously was written much later, is a
rip-roaring romp of Hungarian dances that is practically impossible to sit
still through. It is quite remarkable that this liveliest of movements should
be the work of a man approaching his eighties.
Day 221
9 August 2017:
Bruckner – Symphony No. 6 (1881)
Unlike the seeming
majority of critics, I like Anton Bruckner's sixth symphony, mostly for the
fact that it is almost completely different to the other nine. That's not to
say that I don't like his work as a rule because I do, and the one he followed
this with is an absolute doozy. But the sameness that makes the fifth almost
indistinguishable from the third or the eighth to the inattentive listener just
isn't present here. According to the composer 'the Sixth is the sauciest'. Well
quite.
Its oddity has led to
it being considered by many critics as the runt of Bruckner's symphonic litter.
It is certainly the least frequently performed, and words like 'peculiar',
'tiresome', and 'flawed' have been tossed out when discussing it. Personally,
I'd put it in his top three, as there is a clear originality of thought within
its bars, and it has more than its fair share of memorable themes. Right from
the off, the insistent ostinato
rhythm of the violins indicates a different direction from the swirling musical
mists that usually feature at the opening of a Bruckner symphony. The slow
movement is just gorgeous, even by Bruckner's high standards, and the scherzo is unlike any of those from his
other symphonies – almost Mahlerian in its twists and turns into dark corners.
The finale is probably the weakest of the four movements, but then I've never
considered Bruckner's final movements to be his forte. All energy seems spent
by the time he gets to them and this is no exception. Nonetheless, I do like
this symphony a lot, and after Nos. 4 & 7, it's probably the one I listen
to most often.
Day 222
10 August 2017: Piston
– Symphony No. 2 (1943)
Walter Piston's books
on Orchestration and Harmony were indispensable reading when I was a music
student, especially the former with regard to composing for instruments I
didn't play (which would be virtually all of them). Some years passed before I
discovered that, as well being an academic, he was also an eminent composer.
The fact that it's taken me until today to listen to anything he'd ever written
is, I confess, quite shameful.
Anyway, this is
another candidate for the increasingly towering pile of enjoyable discoveries
this year. The first movement is a taut musical argument between its two very
contrasting subjects: the first slightly dark and the second bordering on
jaunty. The heart of the piece is the Adagio
second movement, which features a beautifully expansive melodic line the equal
of anything his countryman Samuel Barber may have written. Indeed, it was this
movement that Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic in a performance
of upon hearing news of the composer's death in November 1976. It all feels
like effortless writing, although by all accounts it was a piece Piston slaved
over for some time, and listening to this there's a feel of a master at work.
So good at it, in fact, that he obviously felt compelled to write books about it.
Day 223
11 August 2017: Berio
– Sinfonia (1969)
And now for something
completely different. We're into day 223 and none of the previous 222
symphonies sound anything remotely like this post-modernist classic. Luciano
Berio's Sinfonia is now approaching
its 50th birthday, yet it still has the power to shock. It is scored for a
large orchestra plus eight amplified vocalists who are employed to sing, talk,
shout, whisper and generally add an extra dimension to the sound world
throughout. It is one of the most enduringly successful works of the last
half-decade,
The first two
movements are very contrasting with the opening section a brutalist landscape
of quotations from Lévi-Strauss battling against avant-garde orchestral writing.
The slow second movement features the singers expanding the harmonics of single
piano notes in a hugely imaginative way, with the text having been taken from
Berio's own work, O King, a tribute
to Martin Luther King who had been assassinated the previous year. These
movement are but preparation for the sensory overload of the third movement; a
quite extraordinary collage of verbal and musical quotations, all of which are
built on a base of excerpts from the scherzo from Mahler's second symphony. Fragments
of text from Samuel Beckett and James Joyce collide with Debussy, Hindemith,
Ravel, Stravinsky, Strauss, Beethoven and many more to produce a dizzying,
heady mix of music and literature. It's an absolutely mind-blowing and trippy
work, feeling almost like some acid-induced 'happening' that would have been
entirely in keeping with the time in which it was written.
Day 224
12 August 2017: Franck
– Symphony in D minor (1888)
Seventies pop star
Carl Douglas is known for one thing and one thing only: his number one single Kung Fu Fighting. In interviews.
whenever he found himself fielding accusations of being a one-hit wonder, he
would respond with, 'Yes, but what a hit!' For some reason this quote came to
mind when considering Belgian composer César Franck's magnum opus, the Symphony in D minor. Franck was, in
symphonic terms, something of a one-hit wonder, and in fact I'd struggle to
name a single other work he wrote in his no doubt impressive career. It is,
however, one of the most frequently performed and recorded symphonies in the
repertoire, and has established his name almost single-handedly.
For all its popularity
now, Franck's Symphony wasn't terribly well received at the time.
Franco-Prussian enmity was still running high in the 1880s, and the symphony as
a form was viewed by many in the French-speaking world as a Germanic construct.
French orchestras refused to perform it, and when, finally, it was performed by
the Paris Conservatoire Orchestra the year before Franck's death, it was
savaged by the critics, with Charles Gounod describing it as incompetent.
Common sense eventually prevailed, and it reputation is now secure. Its unusual
three-movement structure sees all three make use of the same four-bar theme
that opens the work. The central movement, which is actually a slow movement
and scherzo rolled into one, begins
with a memorable cor anglais solo, while the finale sees the opening theme
transformed brilliantly into a sweeping melody that carries all before it towards
a triumphant finish. Definitely the best symphony ever written by a Belgian!
1 August 2017:
Florence Price – Symphony in E minor (1932)
Although Florence
Price was not the first American woman to make a name for herself as a
symphonist, with the estimable Amy Beach having blazed a trail as early as 1896
(see Day 54), she was, however, the first of African-American origin to have
done so. It's impossible to overstate just how great an achievement that was in
1930s USA. Incredibly, this was her first orchestral work, written while she
was recovering from a broken foot, as it happens. It won first prize in the
Rodman Wanamaker Competition, and was performed the following year by the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra – meaning Price became the first black woman to have
been afforded such an honour.
It's an oddly
imbalanced work, with the first two movements having a combined duration of
around 30 minutes, while the second pair barely reach the nine-minute mark
between them. Also, I think it's fair to say that Florence Price was, shall we
say, at least familiar with Dvorak's 'New World' Symphony. The first movement's
main pentatonic theme, its harmonic language, and orchestration all bear more
than a passing resemblance to the Czech composer's work. That said, it is a
really nice piece. The slow movement with its brass chorales has a real
delicate beauty to it. I could definitely have lived without the swannee
whistle in the third movement though.
Day 214
2 August 2017: Enescu
– Symphony No. 3 (1918)
Firmly ensconced in
the category of composers whose name I'm familiar with but whose music I've
never heard, George Enescu was exactly the sort of person I was aiming to
discover more about in my Symphony A Day adventure. Enescu was a close friend
of Alfredo Casella, who has already featured in these pages – most recently
last week – having been fellow-pupils of Gabriel Fauré in Paris. In fact,
Casella's second symphony (see Day 206) was dedicated to Enescu, who had
previously dedicated his own first symphony to Casella.
Symphony No. 3 is
regarded by many of those more familiar with his work as the greatest of the
three he wrote. It's certainly a very substantial work, clocking in at around
50 minutes, and employing a large orchestra plus a wordless choir. The first
movement starts with a throbbing bass line setting a dark tone for the work,
but over the course of the ensuing 20 minutes it passes through so many other
phases that I'm afraid I rather lost whatever thread Enescu was following.
These are the perils of listening works of this scale just once; clearly this
is a piece that requires a few listens to fully assimilate. For the most part,
this is a solemn and brooding work, but all of this leads to the ecstatic
culmination of the final movement, which features the choir in all its glory.
The result is an almost dreamlike world of sublime, heady writing akin to
Scriabin in certain passages. For reasons already mentioned, I will be
revisiting this symphony in the coming days, as it has certainly piqued my
interest in Enescu.
Day 215
3 August 2017:
Prokofiev – Symphony No. 4 (1929/1947)
Well, this is a bit of
an oddity. When Sergei Prokofiev decided to revise his fourth symphony 18 years
after he'd originally composed it, he did it so thoroughly that he effectively
considered it a different work, worthy of its own new opus number. Hence
Prokofiev's catalogue contains a Symphony
No. 4, Op. 47 and a Symphony No. 4,
Op. 112. It was originally composed immediately after the third, and in the
same year as its predecessor's premiere. And as he had with his third symphony,
he used material from another work as the basis of its thematic material. For
the third, he drew from his opera The
Fiery Angel (see Day 160), and this time it was his ballet The Prodigal Son that was raided. The
work was poorly received and probably would have slipped away into relative
obscurity, maybe receiving some kind of later re-appraisal by a more discerning
audience a few decades later.
In an unexpected move,
however, Prokofiev decided to thoroughly revise the work in 1947. The timing
was odd. Prokofiev had, by this point returned to live in the Soviet Union but
was, in common with other Eastern bloc composers, working under an even more
severe Socialist Realism doctrine than ever before. Nevertheless, buoyed by the
success of his fifth symphony a couple of years earlier, Prokofiev took the red
pen to the earlier work, and in the process, virtually doubled it in length. It
is this later version that I've opted to listen to today. The first change
Prokofiev made was to include a forceful introduction before presenting the
hesitant opening theme of the original work. So right from the off, the feeling
is of this being new work. The Andante
tranquilo showcases Prokofiev's unequalled gift for melody, while the third
movement was worked almost unaltered from dance music for the 'Beautiful
Maiden' in The Prodigal Son. The
revised symphony was more enthusiastically received, rather vindicating
Prokofiev's decision.
Day 216
4 August 2017: Dvorák
– Symphony No. 6 (1880)
In common with its
five predecessors, Antonin Dvorák's sixth symphony is rather overshadowed by
the hugely popular trilogy with which he concluded his symphonic output. It was
actually the first to be published in his lifetime, and for a time it was even
considered to be his 'first' symphony before knowledge of his earlier efforts
came to light.
The work represented a
further move towards the more nationalistic style for which he would become
famous, and as such is something of a transitional piece. It is a pleasing
synthesis of the Czech folksongs that were increasingly permeating his work,
and the Germanic symphonic style that had formed the core of his earlier
compositions. Many have observed parallels between this work and the second
symphony of his good friend Brahms, especially in their respective first
movements, and this does share a pastoral feel with his Viennese counterpart.
All of Dvorák's slow movements tend to pale in comparison to the famous Largo from his ninth 'New World'
symphony. The Adagio from this work,
however, gives it a run for its money at least. The work as a whole is pleasant
and not something you could take a dislike to, but there are clearly greater
things to come from this particular composer.
Day 217
5 August 2017:
Atterberg – Symphony No. 6., 'Dollarsymfonin' (1928)
I mentioned when I
featured Kurt Atterberg's third symphony (see Day 100) that its title of 'West
Coast Pictures' had led me to the mistaken belief that he was actually an
American composer. It was probably a belief reinforced by this work's title of
'Dollarsymfonin' or 'Dollar Symphony'. In fact, the nickname derives from the
fact that it won the highly prestigious International Columbia Graphophone
Competition of 1928. The $10,000 prize was worth the equivalent of about
$150,000 in today's money so it was certainly not to be sniffed at. The initial
premise of the competition was for works that completed, or were at least
inspired by, Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony No. 8. In the end the rules were
amended so that any new symphony qualified, and some of the works that are
known to have been submitted were Havergal Brian's 'Gothic' Symphony (part 1 only, see Day 50), Czesław Marek's Sinfonia, Franz Schmidt's Symphony No. 3 and Hans Gál's Symphony No. 1 (both of which I will be featuring next month).
Not only was there an
impressive list of entrants, the roll of stellar judges was jaw-dropping.
Composers Ravel, Respighi, Szymanowski, Glazunov, and Nielsen were all involved
at various stages, assisted by an army of music dignitaries including Thomas
Beecham and Donald Tovey. The deliberations were long and rancorous, with
Atterberg's victory coming courtesy of chairman of the judges Glazunov's
casting vote. It was a hotly disputed and contentious result, with the largely
unheard of Atterberg considered an unworthy winner, especially as the
symphony's main selling point was believed to be the fact that it steered clear
of modernism! As a result, contemporary reviews of the work were scathing. The
fact that it entered the world to such a barrage of criticism seems to have
damaged the work's reputation irreparably, as neither it nor its composer are
especially well-known. Despite the criticism, some of which, I accept, has a
modicum of justification, I think it's a really nice piece. The Adagio is stunningly beautiful, and I
particularly enjoy the section where, after building to an impassioned peak at
around its mid-point, the music subsides into a calm, still section featuring
some lovely woodwind solos. The Vivace
last movement bounces along nicely, and as a whole it's all rather harmless
fun. The controversy it engendered seems inversely related to the
uncontroversial nature of the music.
Day 218
6 August 2017: Mahler
– Symphony No. 7 (1906)
I find myself
listening to most of Gustav Mahler's symphonies on a Sunday as it's just about
the only day of the week I can guarantee having the 70 minutes or more I'll
need to devote to it. Mahler didn't really do 'small scale' and recordings of
this particular work vary in length between 70 and 100 minutes, depending on
the self-indulgence of the conductor. It is, as you'd expect, written for a
massive orchestra, including unconventional (for the time) orchestral
instruments such as guitar, mandolin, tenorhorn, and rute. The symphony is
sometimes called 'Song of the Night' as a result of its two Nachtmusik movements. The opening of the
first of these is one of Mahler's better known themes as result of its use in
the UK for many years in adverts for Castrol GTX oil!
I have to concede that
this is not my favourite Mahler symphony. It is Mahler, so by default it's
better than vast majority of symphonies out there, in my view. However, I find
it errs on the side of turgid at times, and I struggle with it as a rule. The
path of dark, funereal opening leading to all-stops-out blazing finale feels
like a well-trodden path by now. That said, the scenery passed along the way is
certainly interesting at times. Sandwiched between the two Nachtmusik movements is probably Mahler's best Scherzo; a twisted waltz that has a deeply unsettling feel, with
echoes of the burlesque finale from Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. After the nocturnal music that has gone
before, the finale feels like it belongs to a different symphony altogether
and, to me, it is an unsatisfactory ending. No less a critic than Michael
Kennedy considered this to be Mahler’s most glamorous symphony, and Mahler
himself considered it 'light-hearted', which makes me wonder if the performances
I've heard of it have all just completely missed the point. Maybe one day the
enigma of this symphony will all make sense to me.
Today happens to be the 134th anniversary of Alfredo Casella’s birth, so
it is apposite that I should give his second symphony an airing. Actually, it's
questionable whether Casella considered this his second symphony. He wrote it
in the same year as he conducted the premiere of his first, and as you might
recall when I featured that a few months ago (see Day 102), Casella pretty much
disavowed it immediately, to the extent that he used a re-scored version of the
slow movement in this piece. The implication seems quite clear that he did not
intend the earlier work to be heard again.
While the first symphony is by no means a bad composition, it is clearly
substantially inferior to this. The dark tone is set right from the off with a
funereal theme set against a tolling bell, and while the scherzo provides
relative light relief, the overall mood of the work for the most part is sombre. The beautiful slow movement that Casella thought so much
of that he played it again, Sam, is of course just as beautiful second time
around, but benefits from this more opulent scoring. Oddly, the march-like
finale is not actually the final movement, being superseded by six-minute Epilogo. It is this that elevates Symphony No. 2 to greatness. Starting
quietly, its soaring string line builds through a long crescendo to a
magnificent climax featuring full orchestra, organ and bells. As for its
undoubted neglect, well, as mentioned when discussing his first symphony,
Casella was persona non grata for a while in his homeland for his support of
Mussolini during the last war. Even so, it beggars belief that this symphony
was first recorded just eight years ago, exactly 100 years after it was
written. Casella's rehabilitation is under way, but has quite a way to go
still.
Day 207
26 July 2017: Tchaikovsky – Symphony No. 4 (1878)
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's six numbered symphonies can, more or less, be
split down the middle. The first three are comparatively lightweight, and
less-frequently performed, while numbers four to six are giants of the
symphonic repertoire and can be heard regularly in concert halls all over the
world. While unquestionably great works, there was a time when I rather tired
of them. In my student days, my now wife and I were regulars at the
subscription concert series at Victoria Hall, Hanley, and it felt like every
second programme featured Tchaikovsky 4 or 5. Listening today felt like
reacquainting myself with an old friend, albeit one I'd been giving a wide
berth to for the last twenty years.
The symphony is bookended by the famous 'Fate' fanfare, and as symphonic
openings go, it really is right out of the top drawer. Parallels are often
drawn with the similarly arresting opening of Beethoven's fifth, and this was
something the composer was complicit in having written of his incorporation of the
Beethoven in this symphony's programme. The delicate Andantino features one of
Tchaikovsky's most plaintive melodies, while the extraordinary third movement
Scherzo features the strings playing pizzicato
throughout, no doubt chafing the finger skins of many a fiddle player down the
years. The finale rattles along at a furious pace until just past its halfway
point when, in a genuine masterstroke, the opening 'Fate' fanfare crashes back
in. From the barren aftermath it leaves, the music recovers its impetus with
the return of the movement's first theme and ploughs headlong towards its
crowd-pleasing conclusion. Vintage Tchaikovsky.
Day 208
27 July 2017: Sullivan – Symphony in E, 'Irish' (1866)
Confession time: I cannot stand Gilbert & Sullivan. I don't use
those words lightly, because to tell the truth there's not much music I do
genuinely dislike. Maybe the really whiniest forms of Country music, and pretty
much all hip hop, but apart from that I've got a high tolerance level. G&S
though ... urgh. Don't ask me to explain why, it's clearly just a personal
thing given how enduringly popular they are with amateur operatic societies to
this day. To use what I promise will be the only Morrissey quote I'll deploy
this year, it says nothing to me about my life.
Thankfully, this bears no relation to any of his ghastly operettas. That
may be because there was no input from his partner-in-crime, WS Gilbert, whom
he had yet to meet, but in reality this was written before he had developed a
style of his own. Sullivan was only 21 when he started work on this, and being
a youthful work, the influences (Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann) are still
pretty easily detected. As for the 'Irish' nickname, it indicates nothing more than that the first movement was conceived while Sullivan was holidaying in Ireland. Whatever its merits and demerits, the fact is that this
is symphony written by an Englishman in the 1860s, and there aren't many of
those around. It pre-dates Stanford's first symphony by ten years and Parry's
by sixteen. And while it's never likely to be much more than a curiosity in the
grand scheme of English music history, there is plenty to like about this work
... not least that there isn't a patter song in sight.
Day 209
28 July 2017: Khachaturian – Symphony No. 2, "The Bell" (1944)
At around about the time that Shostakovich was writing his own
devastating depiction of war-torn Russia, the Symphony No. 8 (see Day 158),
Aram Khachaturian composed this 'requiem of wrath' in response to the same
events. Like Shostakovich, however, they were not events he was experiencing
first-hand as they spent most of the war safely hidden away in a composers'
retreat 150 miles east of Moscow. Nevertheless, the incalculable losses
suffered by the Soviet Union during World War II were deeply felt across the
whole country and inevitably permeated the music of the time.
As a rule, Khachaturian doesn't really do subtlety and this work batters
its point home in no uncertain terms. At around 50 minutes in length, it can be
quite an arduous listen, but given the time and place it was written, it was
hardly going to be a musical tea party. The symphony takes its title from the
bell motif that opens the work in almost murderous fashion, and straight from the off it's
clear this is going to be a bumpy ride. It's not all blood and guts though, as
there are many moments of often sparsely scored music of a desolate nature. The
third movement is the core of the piece – an austere funeral march based on an
Armenian folk tune Vorskan akhper,
and one in which Khachaturian expressly set out to portray the 'superhuman
suffering' of his compatriots. Harsh brass prefaces the final movement, which
picks up the aural assault where it had left off. There is a brief moment of
calm towards the end but it soon builds again to a terrifying denouement. If nothing else, this
work can be held up to prove that there is a lot more to Khachaturian
than his popular ballet scores.
Day 210
29 July 2017: Sammartini – Sinfonia in A major, J-C 63 (c. 1760)
While Haydn is often referred to as 'The Father of the Symphony', it is
probably fairer to say that he popularised a form that was developed elsewhere.
Of the many composers who might lay claim to creating the genre, Giovanni
Battista Sammartini is indisputably one of the founding fathers of the symphony
as we know it. Sammartini wrote about 80 Sinfonias, and the "J-C"
cataloguing system bears no relation to the order in which they were composed.
Consequently, the c.1760 date I've given this particular one is very 'circa' as
it could have been written any time between 1759 and 1775. This is one of his
later symphonies, with some of the earlier ones dating back to the 1730s, the
decade in which Haydn was born.
I could have chosen any one of those 80-or-so symphonies, but this is a
perfectly representative choice. It differs from the later style typical of
Haydn, Mozart et al in that it has three movements. They follow the
fast-slow-fast pattern typical of the Italian opera overture, from which the
Sinfonia spawned. The influence Sammartini had on the Classical period
composers is clearly discernible here, with its ostensibly rhythmic themes
based around the notes of the triad. The light elegance one associates with
Haydn's slow movements again has its roots in this music, although the triple time
final movement is closer in style to the third movement minuets of the
Classical period. This does lead to a slight feeling of incompleteness, as if
there should be a presto finale to finish. That said, this is delightful music
of great historical importance.
Day 211
30 July 2017: Magnard – Symphony No. 2 (1896)
Albéric Magnard, is a composer probably more famous – if he is known at
all – for the heroic nature of his death than for his music. His demise at the
age of 49, single-handedly defending his property from invading German forces
in the early years of World War I, turned him into a national hero. Sadly, it
hasn't secured his musical legacy as he is little-known in his native France,
and largely unheard of in this country. I feel duty bound to do my bit to help
promote him.
This symphony was originally composed in 1892, After it was
first performed in full four years later, however, the original second movement
(entitled Fugues) was dispensed with
and replaced with the Danses movement
that now occupies that slot. This resulted, by all accounts, in the overall
work becoming ten minutes shorter when it was presented in its new configuration in
1899. Although nominally in E major, the symphony's unsettling opening doesn't
really establish any key with any degree of certainty for quite some time.
There is a feeling throughout of a free spirit at work, seemingly going where
his fancy takes him. This really comes to the fore in the sublime third
movement; a theme and variations marked Très
nuancé, which, at times, is close to what I imagine we might have got had
Ravel ever written a symphony. There are also echoes of Strauss, and the
conclusion of the symphony features a grand theme that might have been lifted
from Elgar. All of these similarities would have been entirely accidental
though, as Magnard is a composer of great originality. I'm a big fan of his
work and wish he could be gifted with some form of revival.
Day 212
31 July 2017: Panufnik – Metasinfonia (1978)
Andrzej Panufnik went through a period of refining his musical language
in the mid-Seventies, and the practical offshoot of this was a cluster of four
symphonies produced in almost as many years. Metasinfonia is the fourth of those and his seventh overall. It was
written for the unusual combination of organ, timpani and strings, and in it
Panufnik made a conscious effort to redress the balance between ‘feeling and
intellect’, that had, to be honest, made its two predecessors rather cold,
academic exercises. Having written at great length about the schematic approach
he took to Nos. 5 and 6, even to the extent of providing diagrams in the score,
Panufnik’s programme notes for Metasinfonia
were far more concise, accepting that the technicalities of his compositional
methods might be of little interest to the listener.
Metasinfonia feels more like an organ concerto than a
symphony, something the composer himself acknowledged. The changing dynamic
between orchestra and soloist does, however, provide this work with an extra
dimension that informed all the subsequent works Panufnik was to write. It
feels like a less rigid composition generally, and the simple fact is that this
particular combination of instruments sounds fantastic to my ears. With Metasinfonia, Panufnik felt he had found
his feet again as a composer, and while it is by no means his most well-known
work – almost certainly the least-performed – I think it is a very strong piece
that deserves greater familiarity.
19 July 2017: Vaughan Williams – Symphony No. 5 (1943)
Ah, Ralph Vaughan Williams. How do I love thy fifth
symphony? Let me count the ways. It gives me great pleasure to bring up the
double-century in my Symphony A Day journey with one of my all-time favourites.
I'm not going to make a case for this being the greatest symphony from a
technical point of view, nor will I argue for its inclusion alongside the Eroica or Symphonie Fantastique for being the most influential. No, this one
is personal, it just touches me in a way that very few other works of art ever
have. If I had name the symphony I'm featuring this year that I've listened to
the most in my life, this would probably come out on top.
I've often pondered why this strikes such a chord with me.
The best I can come up with its use of modes throughout giving rise to music
that is tonal-but-not-tonal; sufficiently piquant to steer it away from the
blandness it could easily have sunk into. Right from the off that tonal
ambiguity is heard, with an essentially D major theme playing over a pedal C
bass. There's a yearning feel about the music that probably seemed nostalgic
even when it was written, and the fact that it was first performed during World
War II must have left its audience longing for the peace it beautifully
depicts. The symphony actually makes use of a wealth of material Vaughan
Williams had written for his at-the-time unfinished opera The Pilgrim's Progress. I only heard the finished opera very
recently and was quite surprised at just how much of it is practically
unchanged in the symphony. That is especially true of the Romanza third movement, with the opening cor anglias theme coming
straight from the start of Act I Scene 2. The searing intensity of this
movement rarely fails to bring a tear to the eye of this wizened old cynic. A
wonderful Passacaglia fourth movement culminates in a triumphant return of the
symphony's opening theme, which in turn subsides into some gorgeous string
writing that soars up to the heavens. It's a hugely spiritual work, and it will
always occupy a special place in my heart.
Day 201
20 July 2017: Beethoven – Symphony No. 6, 'Pastoral' (1808)
So, how on earth does one follow a giant of the symphonic
repertoire like the mighty Fifth. Well, by writing an even better one of
course. Technically, he didn't actually follow the Fifth with this as both were
premiered (along with his Piano Concerto
No. 4, and Choral Fantasy for piano,
chorus and orchestra) in the same extraordinary four-hour concert on 22
December 1808. By virtue of being performed first in that concert, this was
actually the fifth symphony in order of premiere, if not in order of
composition. Anyway, this hugely popular work is many people's favourite
symphony, and it's hard to think of another with so many glorious tunes packed
into its 40-minute length. While that in itself would undoubtedly secure its
place in the hearts of any music-lover, there is the unescapable fact that a
whole generation grew to love this piece through its use in the Walt Disney
film Fantasia.
And what's not love about it? The addition of a helpful
descriptive title for each movement allows the audience to clearly see what
picture Beethoven was painting with his music, which all adds to the listening
experience. The first movement, 'Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in
the countryside', contains some of the composer's most instantly recognisable
music. There's a treat for ornithologists in the 'Scene by the brook' second
movement, with bird songs featured towards the end identified by Beethoven in
the score as the nightingale, quail, and cuckoo. The final three movements are,
unusually for the time, sequenced together with the terrifying storm of the
fourth movement subsiding into the 'Shepherd's song' of the finale, which is
right up there among the greatest tunes ever written. Quite simply, it's
brilliant from start to finish, but I suspect I'm preaching to the converted
here.
Day 202
21 July 2017: Bax – Symphony No. 4 (1930)
Fun fact: this is the fourth day in a row that I've featured
a symphony that lives permanently on my phone in iTunes, which indicates that
I'm on something of a run of personal favourites at the moment. Arnold Bax's
fourth symphony was, like much of his music, inspired by nature, and in this
particular case, the seascapes of the Western Highlands. Even by his standards,
this is a richly scored work, with xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, harp, and
organ all employed in addition to a larger than standard orchestra.
It has been said that this piece lacks a bit of cohesion,
particularly in comparison to its predecessor, the wonderful third symphony.
For me, it feels more connected to his brilliant tone poems such as November Woods and Tintagel than any of his other symphonies. You can practically
smell the sea air in the wild and blustery first movement. The effect of a
large orchestra playing mostly quiet and calm music is something I always enjoy
hearing, and it is used to great effect in the Lento moderato slow movement, as if depicting great forces at rest,
that could be stirred up by a change of wind direction at any moment. The
triumphal ending is unusual for Bax, and again adds to the feeling that this is
a largely joyful work, celebrating an environment he clearly loved.
Day 203
22 July 2017: Still – Symphony No. 1, 'Afro-American' (1930)
Coincidentally written in the same year as Bax's Symphony
No. 4, William Grant Still's Afro-American
Symphony is a very different proposition. Still is another of those
composers who, if asked about a few days before listening to one of their works
as part of this series, I would have drawn a blank. He is, however, one of my
most enjoyable discoveries of the year, and judging by the response to my
Twitter post, a highly popular choice. This work led to Still being the first
African American to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra, and was,
according the academic Dr. Edith Borroff, the most performed symphony by an
American prior to 1950. It was performed by 38 different orchestras on both
sides of the Atlantic in its first 20 years.
It's not hard to see why it was so hugely popular. It's a
lovely, bluesy, Gershwinesque work that tapped into the appetite at the time
for jazz and African-American music. The four movements are each prefaced in
the score by words from the black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, and were also
given titles: Longing, Sorrow, Humor, and Aspiration. I
think I can safely say that this is the first symphony I've featured this year
that calls for a tenor banjo! This features prominently in the lively third
movement, which has always been a concert favourite. The first movement has
echoes of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue,
and is a straight twelve-bar blues for the most part, featuring some beautiful
blues-inflected melodies. The whole work is an absolute delight, and I'll be
exploring some more of his work in future.
Day 204
23 July 2017: Penderecki – Symphony No. 7, 'Seven Gates of
Jerusalem' (1996)
There have been some pretty imposing works featured in my
occasional Choral Symphony Sunday slot, but there can be few as mighty as this
one. Krzysztof Penderecki hadn't originally conceived this work as a symphony,
rather believing it to be an oratorio. And certainly its seven movements don't
conform in any way to standard symphonic structure. Nevertheless, after a
couple of performances under the title Seven
Gates of Jerusalem, Penderecki subsequently affixed the name Symphony No. 7. That in itself was
something of an oddity as his Symphony
No. 6 was incomplete at the time, and in fact it remains incomplete to this
day!
The work was commissioned to commemorate the third
millennium of the city of Jerusalem, and it certainly made quite an impression.
As mentioned when I featured his third symphony (see Day 41), Penderecki left
his early avant-garde style behind in favour of a more conventional and direct
language from about the mid-1970s onwards. There are occasional echoes of those
earlier extended techniques to be heard at some points in this work, and the
effect when they appear is quite stunning. The sheer raw power on display at
times, especially in the orchestra-and-chorus tuttis that occur at key moments
in the piece, takes one's breath away. The core of the symphony is the
15-minute-long fifth movement Lauda,
Jerusalem, Dominum, where percussion-driven staccato music crescendos
before making way for a central, plaintive, hymn-like passage for choir and
soloists. Then from a sparsely scored orchestral section, the music builds once
again to a massive climax. That is followed by an emotionally-charged Hajetà alai jad adonài, which features a
speaker reciting in Hebrew. If there's a criticism, it is that over the work's
seven movements, it is virtually all shade and precious little light. That
said, this a very profound work that wasn't meant to have them dancing in the
aisles. I had to listen to the full hour of this twice to fully get a handle on
it, and it certainly rewarded a repeat hearing. I recommend this very highly.
Day 205
24 July 2017: Scriabin – Symphony No. 3, 'The Divine Poem'
(1904)
Alexander Scriabin's career followed the reverse trajectory
to yesterday's composer, Penderecki. Scriabin started his career writing
luscious, late-romantic scores, such as this one, before developing a harsher
and more atonal style later. This is a powerful and richly textured musical
poem, in which Scriabin set himself the not inconsiderable target of depicting
'the evolution of the human soul and its ultimate union with the cosmos'. There
is a programme of sorts – the lyrical, Straussian first movement is entitled Struggles and portrays humanity
wrestling with the concept of God. The sensual second movement (Delights) involves humanity evolving a
more Pantheistic view, while the final Divine
Play comes from the resulting freedom from subordination to a supreme
being.
Quite how much of this Scriabin manages to pull off in
strictly musical terms is debatable. The massive 25-minute first movement
dominates the work, and while it may not be held together by any kind of
recognisable form, it maintains interest throughout by virtue of its splendid,
overarching melodies. The music of the second movement is absolutely ravishing
and, to be honest, I cared not in the slightest what the composer was trying to
put across beyond the splendour of his own gift for harmony. I've never quite
understood why Scriabin is performed far less frequently than some of his contemporaries,
most of whom he was at the very least an equal to. I could quite easily see
this spectacularly crowning off a Prom concert, just as it did in 2010 ... for
the only time in the last 96 years.
