Day 277
4 October 2017: Shostakovich –
Symphony No. 13, 'Babi Yar' (1962)
Yes, a choral symphony and it's
not even Sunday! Following on from his 11th and 12th symphonies, which
commemorated the events of the years 1905 and 1917 respectively, it could be
said that this is the third in Dmitri Shostakovich's trilogy of 'history plays'.
The historic event he chose as the subject for this symphony was about as bleak
as one could imagine. Babi Yar was the site of an horrific massacre of an
estimated 150,000 mostly Jewish Ukrainians in 1941 by the Nazis, although
the work is not based entirely upon these events. The symphony is in five movements and each is a setting of a different Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem concerned with the events and hardships of the Soviet people
during the war. The first movement is a setting of Yevtushenko's poem Babi Yar, hence the symphony's title.
There is some debate over
whether this is a symphony in strictest sense, with some considering it an oratorio or even
song cycle, but Shostakovich called it a symphony and gave it a number so the
matter is not up for discussion in my view. The scoring is unusual: a
large orchestra is called for, plus a bass soloist, and a chorus of basses
singing almost entirely in unison. This does lend the piece a suitably dark
tone throughout, in keeping with its subject matter. The first movement, mostly
concerning the massacre itself, is as harrowing as one might expect. And while
the sinister burlesque of the second movement might hint at mocking gallows
humour, by the time we come to the desolate third movement depicting the
wartime struggles of the country's women there really is a feeling of no hope remaining
for humanity. Rather like his eighth symphony, this is a difficult listen but a
vital historical document.
Day 278
5 October 2017: Brahms –
Symphony No. 4 (1885)
I can't think of a symphonist
more consistently brilliant than Johannes Brahms. This is his fourth and final
symphony, and I can't find fault with any of them, with this one in particular
being a long-standing favourite of mine. My introduction to this symphony
actually came via an arrangement of the scherzo by keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman
called Cans and Brahms, which
featured on the Yes album Fragile.
After taking twenty years agonising over his first symphony, he was a more
confident symphonist by this time and he started working on number four barely
a year after the premiere of his third. That said, he did apparently make a two
piano arrangement of the work to test the water with his colleagues before
trusting it to a full orchestra. Ever the self-critic, it seems.
It's a simply marvellous piece.
The first movement has a lilting theme of falling and rising thirds that has an
insistent momentum to it, while the beautiful Andante moderato second movement begins with an exposed and almost
funereal modal melody, but gradually develops into some of his most impassioned
music. Following the aforementioned scherzo, the final movement is
a memorable passacaglia. There was a
conducting element to my music degree, and one of the tasks I was given was to
conduct the university orchestra this finale, and by studying the score so
closely I was able to see at first hand just how beautifully put together it
is. The passacaglia theme is
supposedly borrowed from JS Bach, and over a brilliant set of 30 variations
(plus a coda) the momentum steadily builds until a shift into a quicker piu mosso tempo sends the symphony
sprinting triumphantly towards the finish line.
Day 279
6 October 2017: Vaughan
Williams – Sinfonia antartica (1952)
Ralph Vaughan Williams was no
stranger to film music. He received many plaudits for his first score 49th Parallel in 1940. He then wrote
others for the British Ministry of Information during the war, as well as the
1947 historical drama The Loves of Joanna
Godden. In the same year, he was approached to compose the music for the
forthcoming Ealing Studios film Scott of
the Antarctic, which featured an all-star cast including John Mills (who
played Captain Scott), James Robertson Justice, Kenneth More, and Christopher
Lee. To say that RVW rose to the occasion is a minor understatement, and the
quality of the music he produced, as well as the heroism of the story, drove
him to expand the score into a full-blown five-movement symphony, completing it
four years later.
The music memorably used during
the opening titles of the film forms the first subject of the first movement
and the symphony as whole contains very little original thematic material of
its own, with all of its main motifs having featured in the film. Vaughan Williams had
composed far more music than was used so his task was essentially one of forming it into a symphonic structure. The scoring is particularly evocative with a
large orchestra bolstered by a wind machine to depict the Antarctic blizzards,
as well as a wordless solo soprano and female chorus. He also employs an organ
to quite spectacular effect in the central movement Landscape, which is meant
to represent the impassable ice falls referred to in the quote from Coleridge's
Hymn before Sunrise that prefaces the
movement in the score. All of the movements have an associated short literary
quotation, most memorably the final movement, which quotes from the final entry
in Scott's journal. These superscriptions are occasionally recited before each
movement in performance – including the recording I grew up with by Andre
Previn and the LSO. It's doubtful that Vaughan Williams intended them to
feature as part of the performance given that the fourth movement is supposed
to follow the third without a break, but I quite like to hear them. It's a
surprisingly infrequently performed work, possibly due to the requirement for
voices that are sparingly used, but it's one of my favourite RVW symphonies.
Day 280
7 October 2017: Glazunov –
Symphony No. 5 (1895)
I quite fell in love with
Alexander Glazunov's fourth symphony when I featured it back in April (see Day 109) so I was rather looking forward to this one when I saw it looming on the
horizon in my schedule. As with all of his eight completed symphonies, it is
scandalously neglected. He had the misfortune to be active as a composer at
around the same time as Tchaikovsky's final years, and although seen as an heir
apparent to The Five or The Mighty Handful of Balakirev,
Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov (Glazunov's mentor), he tends to
be overshadowed by them instead. His legacy in his home country appears to be
one of an old-fashioned composer who shunned the modernism of his successors
such as Stravinsky. There has been a reappraisal of sorts, but it's still rare
to hear a Glazunov symphony in the concert hall.
Nevertheless, this is a classic
from the period in the Russian arts known as the Silver Age. Glazunov did ally
himself with the Russian sensibilities of his predecessors in The Five, but this
definitely looks back to the Germanic tradition largely abandoned by them. Many
have detected the influence of Wagner in this symphony, while others
Tchaikovsky, and it is this amalgamation of Russian and Teutonic styles that
makes Glazunov such an individual voice. Although the fourth is a more
attractive work dripping with gorgeous melodies, this seems to have a grander
stature and its powerful, optimistic finale is a joy throughout.
Day 281
8 October 2017: Rubbra –
Symphony No 9, 'Sinfonia Sacra' (1972)
Not the first Sinfonia Sacra
I've featured this year so far, but today's occupant of the Choral Symphony
Sunday slot is a very different beast to the purely orchestral Andrzej Panufnik
symphony of the same name (see Day 77). Edmund Rubbra's choral symphony
actually started life some ten years earlier as an oratorio based on the
Resurrection. After completing his eighth symphony in 1968, Rubbra decided that
the oratorio had become too unwieldly and difficult to ally to his innate sense
of form, and that the material would be better served if recast as a symphony.
Using JS Bach's Passions as a
model, Rubbra included a role for the Evangelist, but broke with tradition by
writing for a female voice: a contralto. He also adopted Bach's policy of
employing Lutheran chorales, but set them alongside Catholic hymns in an act of
unification. The symphony opens with the crucifixion, with the first words sung
being Christ's last words on the cross: 'Eli,
Eli, lama sabachthani?' It's a beautiful piece of writing, and the chorale
settings that follow at the end of each section are stunning; demonstrably the
work of a highly accomplished writer for voices. Sinfonia Sacra is an absolute masterpiece that in just about any
other country would take its place as one of the great choral works. For some
reason, we Brits just don't treasure individual voices like Rubbra's.