Duparc 12 songs

 Day 59

Duparc 12 Songs

Charles Panzéra

Magdeleine Panzéra-Baillot

Duparc had one of the most extraordinary careers of all notable composers. He lived into his 80s but ceased composition completely in his mid 30s. The reasons for this are not completely clear but it seems he had some sort of mental crisis which made it impossible for his to composer again. He probably has the smallest output of any composer of real significance. Essential it amounts to one symphonic poem, a few miscellaneous bits and pieces and a group of a dozen or so songs - the exact number depends on how you deal with some juvenilia and revisions. But this dozen songs are, rightly, regarded as absolutely central to the French song repertory and are the equal of anything by Fauré or the other masters of the genre.

I knew a few of these songs individually but this was my first time hearing the set. What surprised me most was the sheer power and energy of some of the songs.  In my mind French song in general and Duparc in particular suggests dreaminess, yearning and rather limpid textures with plenty of quiet tremolo figures in the piano. There is certainly some of this but elsewhere  there there is fire and unrestrained passion. The piano parts are constantly inventive and there were some really interesting exchanges where the main melodic material moved from the singer to the piano and back.  Duparc’ harmonic language is refined and typically French - only occasionally was one reminded of Schumann or the German school. Duparc certainly had a tendency to move flatwards rather than sharpwards in his harmonic progressions and this certainly helps bring a reflective even melancholy to the more inward-looking songs.

This performance is by Charles Panzera and his wife, who we encountered in the Fauré songs a few weeks ago. The recording shows its age but is a really fine example of that particularly French  baritone sound that has now virtually disappeared.

Moeran Symphony in g minor

 Day 58

Moeran Symphony in g minor

BBC Philharmonic

Vassily Sinaisky

This symphony by Moeran - for some reason he tends to be known as E J Moeran as if he were an amateur cricketers about to come out to bat at Lords - has a high reputation among English writers on music.  I’ve seen it described as one of the very greatest of English symphonies.  As far as I recall I’ve not heard a note of Moeran’s music before so I approached this with an open mind.

If I had expected anything it would have been a piece of English pastorale as part of what Elizabeth Lutyens naughtily called the ‘cowpat’ school. There was certainly an element of Vaughan Williams in this music but the main presence here is Sibelius - a reminder of just how much he loomed over English music between the wars.  Indeed the end of the symphony is a fairly blatant rip off of the end of Sibelius 5.

At times the music seems like pro-Walton who was working on his first symphony at the same time as Moeran was writing this piece (he spent the best part of a decade on and off on the composition). But there is nothing of the real bite and intensity that Walton produces from his orchestral forces - which are actually smaller than those required by Moeran.

I found this a perplexing work. There were lots of interesting passages but I couldn’t see how it all hung together - there seemed to be too much disparity in style and material. Perhaps the scherzo came off best but even that seemed to meander at times.

So while I was glad to hear the piece I did wonder what all of the fuss was about. I would see this as a curiosity rather than a neglected masterpiece. Perhaps another hearing might make me change my mind but it may be some time before I can get round to that.

Dvořák Violin concerto

 Day 57

Dvořák Violin concerto in a minor op 53

Rachel Barton Pine

Royal Scottish National Orchestra

Teddy Abrams

I listened to a fair amount of Dvořák when I was at school and university. I had several of the symphonies on LP and a friend of mine had some of the others so I think that I had heard all of the symphonies by the time I left school. I still have an affection for symphony no 1 - The Bells of Zlonice - though it is far too long for its material.

I've played symphonies 5-9 and the cello concerto and also the wind serenade. At university the opera group gave the first performance in the UK of Dmitrij - which was certainly one of the highlights of my time there.

Since then I have rather tempered my early enthusiasm for Dvořák. I think that the problem is that he himself struggled with two different aspects of his musical personality - there is the Czech composer characterised by the symphonic dances but also the serious Germanic composer of symphonies. Personally I think that his music is at its finest when he is not pretending to be Brahms - but that it because of all the major composers Brahms is the one whose music I find least interests me.

This violin concerto seems to suffer from the duality. Time and again one hears stretches of the Czech Dvořák, but then these become stifled by what seems to have been the underlying need to write in a more serious style. So in the end I felt the piece was neither one thing nor the others. The last movement was the most attractive, but even there is wandered off in places and I felt there was a lack of consistency in the style.

So although I was glad to hear the work and of course there were some beautiful passages this is not something which I can see myself returning to with any great enthusiasm. Of course like everything in this project judging a piece on a single hearing is hardly a fair way of coming to a considered view about its merits, but that is the whole point of what I am doing this year. Listening to new pieces and deciding what further exploration I want to make.

Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande

 Day 56

Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande

Orchestra and Chorus (unnamed)

Roger Désormière

It was only when I was researching the Dukas opera (day 46) that I realised to my embarrassment that I had never actually listened properly to the most famous Maeterlinck opera of them all - Debussy’s Pélleas. I’d heard bit and pieces of it over the years and I think that must have written an essay about it at some point, but I’ve never seen it on stage but this was the first time that I sat down with a score and followed it from beginning to end.

It is an extraordinary piece and I can quite see why it is regarded as such an important milestone in the development of opera. To be honest it took me a little while to get property attuned to the ethos of the piece but once I had got into the right frame of mind I found it utterly absorbing. The declaration of love between the two main characters is about as far removed from the world of La Bohème as it possible to be. That’s not a criticism of Puccini - music which I love - but a reflection of two very different approaches to music and drama.  The end of Pélleas is wonderfully moving and I was so pleased to, at long last, atone for my neglect hear the whole score in its entirety.

This is a classic performance recorded in France during the war with singers who were coached by some of the original performers of the opera.  There is a particular quality to French voices of this era which is highly attractive and fits the music like a glove. That style has more or less disappeared now as singers have much more international careers. The mono recording is showing its age and couldn’t compare with a modern performance but it doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the intricacies of the score. 

Perotin Sederunt principes

 Day 55

Perotin Sederunt Principes 

Early music consort of London

David Munrow

We go back to day to some of the earliest notated music in the western tradition. Perotin, Leonin, and the Notre Dame School were the starting points int he music history course on the B.Mus syllabus - the these are the first two composers in the western tradition that we know by name - thanks to the lecture notes of a student of music history who has come to be known as Anonymous Four, which were written at least a century after this music was written. These composer of the Notre Dame school were experimenting in writing music in two or more parts - with a slow moving lower part based on plainsong and more free-flowing upper part(s) using rhythmic patterns. Indeed this is the first western music we know which has rhythmic notation.

Perotin's claim to fame is that he wrote two four-part pieces - the first four-part music that has come down to us. The more famous of the two is Viderunt, which is the one which always seems to be used to illustrate his music. I have heard that several times but I hadn't hear the companion piece Sederunt.  Both pieces were written in around 1200.

This is astonishing music. Perotin slows down the chant so much that a single note can last a whole minute. On top of this the three voices weave in and out of each other in a dancing rhythm - in modern notation we would note this largely as alternate crotchets and quavers in 6/8 time, - with frequent clashes of tones and fourths. In many ways it seems very modern and this music has undoubtedly had a big impact on the minimalist school of 20th and 21 century composers.

The music raises so many questions. We know the notes and there is broad consensus on how to interpret the rhythms but we don't know anything else about how this music was performed. How fast did it go? Was it sung as the same volume throughout or was their light and shade? Were the upper parts sung by single voices or groups of voices? How were the long notes in the lowest part sustained? Were instruments used?

Then there are questions of how on earth the performers actually managed the performance. What music did they actually sing from? how did they rehearse? how did they keep together. In modern transcriptions the music is organised in conventional bars but the concept of the bar as a unit of music didn't really exist at the time that this music was written. The manuscripts of Perotin's music we have are copies made after his death and to some extent the rhythmic notation will have been amended to suit the conventions of the time.  

I don't really know enough about music of the period to begin to answer these questions but as a practical musician it intrigues to wonder what the singers of the time made of this completely new sort of music. It must have seen completely strange to them and surely they couldn't simply have been given a copy of the music and sung it there and then correctly first time through.

This performance from David Munrow and the Early music consort of London is now almost 50 years old. I find that quite astonishing because it only seems like yesterday that the LP set of Music in the Gothic Era came out - I had a copy on my shelves for many years. The performance stands up pretty well. It is not quite as austere as some modern performances but neither is it over elaborated by superfluous instrumental additions. Whether the music sounded like this in Paris in 1200 we will never know, but on its own terms this is a very satisfying performance.

I was lucky enough when I was a school to see David Munrow and the Early music consort give a lecture recital in Norwich in, I think, 1972. He was an infectious enthusiast for all things musical, not only live but in his wonderful radio programme for young people Pied Piper. His death at only 33 was not only a personal tragedy but a huge loss to music in this country. Imagine what his career would have been like had he lived to a ripe old age. 

Hahn Venezia

 Day 54

Hahn Venezia

Anthony Rolfe Johnson

Graham Johnson

I have great affection for the songs of Reynaldo Hahn. They sit on the boundaries between mélodie and popular song and have all of the best features of both. Perhaps you should avoid listening to too many one after the other - to do so would be rather like overindulging in rich chocolate but heard a few at a time they are irresistible.  As ever Hyperion has done a real service for connoisseurs of French song with its 2 volume set of Hahn and several other single discs including this one of songs from and about Venice.

Venezia is a short cycle of six songs for tenor and piano with some other solo voices joining in the the last song. It is written in a popular Italian dialect but that hardly matters. What is so compelling about the music is how, in some simple gestures, Hahn conjures up the dream atmosphere of being serenaded in a gondola as you an oarsman gently propels you along a canal.

I knew the second song - La barchetta - indeed this performance by Rolfe Johnson is one of my favourite recordings of anything. He transforms himself from this rather proper English tenor who grew up in the English cathedral repertoire into a completely seductive Venetian lover- it is quite a revelation.  Hahn himself recorded his song to his own accompaniment - famously managing the melismas at the end of each verse in a single breath. But his performance is much more matter of fact that the one here. 

I’d not heard the entire cycle before - I loved it and will certainly be returning to it. Hahn is such a fascinating character - he was born in Venezuela and came to France as a chance. He knew everybody who mattered in literary and musical circles and ended his life after returning to France after exile during the Second World War (he was Jewish) to become director of the Opéra in Paris. He could never be ranked as a major composer but he is surely one of the most lovable of all those who didn’t quite make it to the very highest rung.

Zemlinsky Lyric symphony

 Day 53

Zemlinsky Lyric Symphony

Elisabeth Söderström

Thomas Allen

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Michael Gilen

When I was at university Zemlinsky was little more than a name in the history books, but in the years since then there has been something of a discovery of his music and now most of his work is available on disc, often with more than one version. But this was my first proper encounter with his music.

Unfortunately I have to say that it is not something that I particularly warmed to. The idiom is somewhere between Mahler and Schoenberg and requires a huge orchestra as well as two strong singers. Personally I found the whole piece overheated and over complex. Every bar seemed to be full of orchestral effects and while each particularly one might have been interesting the overall effect became very tiring. Both parts, but particular the baritone solo, are in a high register and somewhat remorseless. Thomas Allen here did a really fine job of keeping the tone going in the sustained high register - it must have been a nightmare to sing.

The quieter moments, particularly the soprano solo towards the end offered some relief. But again I felt that Zemlinksy didn't quite create a memorable vocal line and I found it difficult to quite understand where he was going with the musical argument.

So nothing here has prompted me to explore more of the composer's works. No doubt my loss because his admirers, and there are many, speak highly of his output. But then the whole point of the this project is for me to encounter music that I have not heard before. It would be very odd if I had an enthusiastic response to everything that I heard.

Chopin the four Ballades

 Day 52

Chopin the four Ballades

no 1 in g minor op 23

no 2 in f minor op 38

no 3 in A flat major op 47

No 4 in f minor op 52

Tamás Vásáry

Chopin is one of the composers of whom I have a passing acquaintance but no in depth knowledge. I’ve certainly played quite a few of the simpler pieces of the years and had various attempts at bashing through the slightly more difficult ones, but the virtuoso pieces are well beyond my capabilities.

These four ballades were not designed as a set but often seem to be performed together. I had a very mixed reaction to them. The gentler lyrical passages are beautiful but I found it much more difficult to appreciate the more extrovert music. Of course one could admire the technique both of the composer and the performer but to me there was too much of a disjunction between the different facets of the music in each of the pieces. 

Of the four the last one was the one I responded more positively - it seem to grow organically and the harmonic and rhythmic ingenuity seemed to gel well together. Jim Samson in his rather fearsome book on Chopin’s music - full of deep shenkerian analysis - describes the 4th ballade as one of Chopin’s supreme achievements. John Ogdon went further and said that it was ‘the most exalted intense and sublimely powerful of all Chopin’s compositions’. 

All four ballades have one thing in common, They both start with a page or so of music which seems within the capability of a moderately accomplished pianist - it is only when you get further into the scores that you realise that this music is only for those with a professional technique and stamina to match.

Musgrave Wild Winter 1

 Day 51

Musgrave Wild Winter 1 - Lamentations for voices and viols

Susie LeBlanc

John Potter

Ian Honeyman

Richard Wiestreich

Fretwork

It has taken to day 51 for me to discuss the work of a living composer. And I have to confess rather shamefacedly that it was only when I read the review of the ENO revival of her opera Mary Queen of Scots that I realised that Thea Musgrave was still alive and working at the grand old age of 95. She must surely be the last pupil of Nadia Boulanger who is still composing.

I knew the name of course but I don't recall hearing any of her music before. This piece is an intriguing discovery - it is a setting for four solo singers and a consort of viols of various poems in different languages all reflecting on the horrors of war. The sonority of the viols bring a very distinctive sound to the music - at the same time both timeless but also very modern in the way that the instruments are used. it is not a straight setting of the texts but more of a kaleidoscope with the voices weaving in and out of each other and the poems overlapping with each other. In many ways it is the aural equivalent of a film with constant cuts between scenes and a mixture of wide angle and close up shots.  I found it very effective. I would describe the idiom as post Britten - slightly reminiscent of the very free interaction of voices and instruments in his church parables. I certainly will explore some more of Musgrave's music - there's plenty to go at as one one expect from a composer whose has been active since at least 1951. Perhaps she will celebrate her centenary with a new piece.

Franck Le Chasseur maudit

 Day 50

Franck Le Chasseur maudit

Orchestre Nationals de Lyon

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider

To many of us the name César Franck is almost always followed by the word Symphony. Though Franck is not quite a 'one-piece' composer the ubiquity of the symphony does tend to get in the way of anything else he wrote. Perhaps that 'does' should be replaced by 'did' because it has to be said that the symphony has all but disappeared from the repertoire these days. Indeed one conductor I talked to said that in his view is had almost become a 'Youth Orchestra piece' and that certainly seems to be the case. I first encountered in Youth Orchestra, though I have played it against since. 

I'm vaguely aware of some of Franck's piano music and I recall rather bashing through the piano part of the violin sonata at University but other than that Franck is rather a closed book to me. Certainly I have not heard this symphonic poem before.

I thought that it was great fun. Lots of atmosphere throughout with some rousing hunting calls at the beginning, a chase, and then some ghostly music towards the end. It was more harmonically adventurous than I had expected given what I knew of Franck's style.  I did however find it relied too much on short sequences and repetitive rhythms - Beethoven might have been able to carry off endless dactyls in the 7th symphony but I think that they got rather tiresome here.

The only other problem with this type of music is the one which I mentioned in connection with Liszt on day 19. What was at the time a fresh new idiom of descriptive music has become over-familiar over the years though use in film and TV scores and so now can sound rather clichéd.  That's hardly the composer's fault but it does sometime get in the way of proper appreciation. It reminds me of the saying - attributed to many different people - 'the definition of an intellectual is somebody who can listed to the William Tell overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger'

Gluck Iphigénie en Aulide

 Day 49

Gluck Iphigénie en Aulide

Soloists

Monteverdi Choir

Orchestre de l'Opera de Lyon

John Eliot Gardiner

Gluck is obviously an important composer in the history of opera so not surprisingly he was part of the A level and undergraduate syllabuses. So I duly wrote essays on his operatic reforms and made all of the usual comments one finds in the history books. But I don't recall actually hearing any of his music and so the essays were completely theoretical. I might possibly have heard the odd snippet here and there but it was a long time before I heard one of the operas complete and started to see what all the fuss was about. I know the other Iphigénie opera (en Tauride) but this was my first encounter with its lesser known companion.

Gluck is a particularly interesting compose in that for the most part his music looks very ordinary, dare one say dull, on the page. In these reform operas there are very few big gestures, the harmony is largely straightforward and the orchestration often very straightforward. You look at the music and wonder quite why this its such highly regarded music. But in performance the effect is quite different. There is genuine beauty in many parts of the score and some extremely moving moments, such as the aria for Iphigénie herself as she contemplates the sacrifice that the gods have demanded of her in return for safe passage of the Greek army to Troy. There is of course a Deus ex Machina at the end when the goddess Diana appears to cancel the demand for the sacrifice and allow everybody to live happily ever after.

The music inhabits an interesting world between the operas of Rameau and Mozart - some of the dance music is reminiscent of Rameau (though not quite with his rhythmic freedom and harmonic audacity) but at other times the opera is close to the world of the Magic Flute. One of its most striking features is the extensive use of the chorus - here we are not far away from Haydn's late choral masterpieces.  Orchestrally the score is relatively straightforward but there are some interesting touches for the horns and some early uses of the clarinets.

Gluck's place in the history of opera is secure. One can trace a clear line through to the French Revolutionary/Napoleonic era composers such as Méhul, Cherubini and Spontini and onwards to Berlioz. He was a great admirer of Gluck and Les Troyens would be a very different work had Gluck never existed. Wagner too was a great admirer of Gluck and produced his own version of the this opera - something John Eliot Gardiner describes in his booklet notes to this recording as a 'deplorable inflated version'. Perhaps I should listen to it sometime!

Bridge The Sea

Day 48

Bridge The Sea

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Martin Brabbins

 

The Sea has. regardless of its own merits, an important place in musical history. It was at a performance of this in St Andrew's Hall in Norwich (where as I mentioned on day 30 I once saw him) that the 10 year old Benjamin Britten heard this piece - the first time he had heard a live orchestra. He said that we was 'knocked sideways' by the music and it was this that led his to seek composition lessons with Frank Bridge. The rest, as they say, is history.

This was, as far as I remember, my first encounter with the music of Frank Bridge. What a piece this is! It is clearly from the same school as Bax's Tintagel and Vaughan William's Sea Symphony. Like both of those pieces it has a very strong opening but, and this might a view that is not shared by many, both of those pieces never quite live up to their opening. But this is piece does - it retained my interest all the way through and left a very strong impression. It is a symphonic suite with four movements, each with a title reflecting one mood of the sea. To that extent it is reminiscent of Debussy's (three movement) La Mer. Bridge's musical language is not as advanced as Debussy's but by the standards of much English music of the time it is pretty adventurous harmonically and rhythmically. But it is the sheer sound of the orchestra which makes the greatest impact. The final movement is a storm scene and Bridge unleashes a real sense of the power of the storm as it crashes on the waves. No wonder the young Britten was so impressed. His storm music in Peter Grimes is in a very different musical idiom but I am sure that he would have been the first to acknowledge the influence that his teacher had on his sound world.

I'm keen to hear more Frank Bridge. The string quartets seem to be particularly high regarded and they might be the next place to go.

Holmès Andromède

Day 47

Holmès Andromède

Orchestra national du Capitole de'Toulouse

Leo Hussain 

This was another piece from the superb Compostrice set on the Bru Zane label.  August Holmès was in fact English but she settled in France and added the accent to her name to demonstrate her kinship with her new home. Her name crops up from time to time in the literature but usually as a footnote or as an aside when dealing with a more well-known composer.  This was the first time that I had head any of her music.

Andromède is a symphonic poem based on a poem by the composer which derives from Greek myth. It is an impressive full-blooded piece which shows mastery of the orchestra. Most commentators see Wagner as the principal influence but it reminded me more than anything else of an amalgam of Liszt and Cesar Franck, though at one point it strayed into Night on a Bare Mountain territory. To me it didn’t quite come off. There was too much sequential repetition, which after a while became irritating, and at times I thought that the more lyrical passages veered very close to Salon music. Nothing wrong with Salon music of course- I really enjoy much of it - but it did seem out of place in this context. The big climax was impressive in a way but somehow the big tune didn’t quite stick in the memory as I am sure the composer wanted it to.

So no forgotten masterpiece, but well worth hearing. I don’t believe in special pleading for Women composers but I do believe that we should take every opportunity to explore their output  - something that recording make possible in a way which was unthinkable when I was developing my knowledge of music. There’s plenty more do discover and I will continue to explore the rich vein which Bru Zane and others have opened up. 

Dukas Ariane et Barbe-Bleue

 Day 46

Dukas Ariane et Barbe-Bleue

Soloists

BBC Singers

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Leon Botstein

Like everybody else I came to Dukas via The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. I played it against recently - a great if nerve wracking experience for a contra bassoonist - and it reinforced my view that it is one of the truly great short orchestral pieces - perhaps only Chabrier’s España rivals it for brilliance. Chabrier is one of my enthusiasm and I am sure he will feature in this series.  I’ve got to know La Péri and the symphony but this was my first experience of this opera.

What a piece - it is one of the very best discoveries so far this year. It is based on a play by Maeterlinck and has links to both Bluebeards Castle and Pelléas e Mélisande . Indeed at one point Dukas briefly quotes form Debussy’s opera. The title is rather deceptive as Bluebeard plays a very minor role in the opera - he has 10 mins at the most of singing in the First Act, is off stage in Act Two and appears, but doesn’t sing in Act 3. 

Dukas has a complete command of the orchestra and the score is full of magical touches. Almost every bar has something of interest. Then the use of the choir is highly distinctive with a lot of wordless singing off stage. This features right from the beginning and gives the opera a hugely impressive start. Dukas control of pacing is superb, with some beautiful moments of contemplation but also some really terrifying climaxes. 

Nobody but a Frenchman could have written this music - hearing it cold you would probably guess it was written by Debussy - but it is also a reminder of the huge influence that Parsifal had on the musical imagination of late 19th century composers. The synthesis of styles is fascinating.

The only reservation is the vocal material. There is only one real aria (at the end of Act 2, where the spirit of Wagner is most obvious) but elsewhere much of the singing is in that typical French style which is half way between recitative and melody. My French is just about good enough to give me a rough idea about what is going on but not good enough to pick up all of the nuances of the language and it has to be said that at times this constant arioso style can be a bit wearying.

The orchestral playing on this recording was phenomenal but I had reservations about the casting of the main character - Ariane. She is on stage more or less all the time and to a large extent carries the opera. She is described in the score as a soprano but in this recording the role was sung by a mezzo, and one who frankly sounded rather too old and wobbly to really carry off the part. In much of the first act she is in dialogue with her nurse - an older character sung by a contralto. Here it was difficult to tell them apart at times, indeed Ariane sometimes sounded older than her nurse, which can’t be right.

So that was a drawback to this performance but it shouldn’t detract from the fact that this is a marvellous opera. I was constantly fascinated by the score and am sure that on repeated listening it will reveal even more of its treasures.

Dukas is certainly not a one work composer. His output may be small but everything I have heard of his is of the very highest quality.

Knussen Two organa

 Day 45

Knussen Two Organa op 27

London Sinfonietta

Oliver Knussen

I have long admired Oliver Knussen's recordings of Stravinsky and Britten and always found him a compelling speaker on television and radio. But I don't think that I have ever listened properly to any of his music.  I might have seen a bit of Where the wild things are on TV but that would have been in the middle of noisy children and so doesn't count.

Today was a busy day so I didn't have time to listen to anything  long. But as Knussen himself says in the notes to this recording 'I prefer to be bewitched for a few minutes than hypnotised for an hour'.  These two organa are very short - the first lasts just over a minute and the second not much longer. But they are full of invention and I really enjoyed listening to them. Knussen had a fantastic ear for orchestral sonority and the rhythms here were always ingenious. They take their inspiration from medieval music - the organa was  one of the earliest forms of polyphony, with a slow cantus  firmus in the back ground and more animated music in the foreground. Both of these pieces use the technique - the first is a only on the white notes and derives from a project to write music for a musical box. One is reminded that Haydn wrote pieces for a mechanical clock so there is certainly a sense here of acknowledging various different historical roots.

So when I have a bit longer I will certainly listen to more of his music. The horn concerto seems a good next step.

Sibelius Symphony no 6

 Day 44

Sibelius Symphony no 6 in d min op104

Lahti Symphony Orchestra

Osmo Vänskä

My first experience of Sibelius was playing the 2nd symphony in youth orchestra. Or at least parts of the 2nd symphony - we couldn't manage the 3rd movement so played movements 1, 2 and 4. which was a little bit of a problem as the 3rd and 4th movements are linked and so starting the 4th movement cold is quite a strange thing to do. Since then I have played several of the other symphonies but I realised that I had neither played or heard the 6th symphony before. 

I found it a rather curious piece. I loved the first movement which seem to flow inevitably from the quiet opening Although it is a comparatively short movement Sibelius seems to have all the time in the world to develop his material - it is hard to think of any other composer who could write like this. 

But I was rather perplexed by the middle movements. Both of them hardly seem to get going before they petered out unexpectedly - indeed following the score of the 2nd movement I was convinced that the double bar marked the end of one section and the start of another, not the end of the entire movement.

The last movement had tremendous energy in places and, again not knowing the piece, I was convinced that we were heading for one of those epic codas such as those in the 2nd and 5th symphonies. Everything seemed to be leading that way - including some impressive cross rhythms in the lower strings - but then the tension subsided and the music died away to a quiet ending. That was beautiful in its own way but nothing like I was expecting and I must confess is did seem a bit of an anti-climax.

There was plenty here to enjoy of course, with lots of Sibelian fingerprints but for me it didn't quite come off as a symphony. Coming as it does between the 5th and 7th symphonies - both absolute masterpieces - it does seem to be rather in the shadows. Perhaps it is just me and that on repeated hearings it will reveal the treasures that so many commentators find in it.

Szymanowski Violin concerto no 1

 Day 43

Szymanowski Violin concerto no 1 op 35

Thomas Zehetmair

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Simon Rattle

I don't really have any memories of Szymanowski. I vaguely recall hearing the 3rd symphony years ago and I might have listed to the opening scene of King Roger but in reality this is unknown territory for me.

What a fabulous piece this violin concerto (1916). The sound world has hints of Ravel, Bartók and early Stravinsky but with a richness at the climaxes which almost suggested Rachmaninov. But it all hangs together very well and there is no doubt that the composer has his own distinctive voice. The solo part is fearsome, with some folk music inspired double and triple stopping and lots of sustained quiet lyrical passages in the very highest register - which must be an absolute nightmare to control with the bow. But in many ways it is the orchestral writing which commands attention. There are prominent parts for celeste, piano and two harps which, together with an enlarged percussion section add a real sense of colour to the score. Speaking of percussion the use of the tambourine here in quiet passages is really effective and shows that its use does not have to be confined to pastiche Spanish music.

This was certainly one of the major discoveries of this project and I am sure that I will explore more of Szyamowski's music - I really must have a proper listen to the whole of King Roger and the Stabat Mater, which several people have called his best single composition.

Smyth Concerto for Violin and Horn

 Day 42

Smyth Concerto for violin horn and orchestra 

Elena Urioste violin

Alex Frank-Gemmill horn

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Daniel Blendulf

I’ve noted before that the repertoire of music by women composers is starting to open up. But it was not that long ago that this music was almost wholly unknown. If I had asked my mother, a keen music lover, to name a female composer I am pretty sure that the only name she would have come up with was Dame (and it always was Dame!) Ethyl Smyth. This was not because of any knowledge of her music but because she had established a reputation as one of those grand eccentric upper class women. Her main claim to fame was through her connection with the Suffragette movement. She wrote the unofficial hymn of the movement - the song of the women ‘Shout, Shout, up with your song’,which many will remember being used as the theme tune for the BBC series Shoulder to Shoulder

This concerto is a comparatively late work (1927) - it has a kept a tenuous place in the literature because of the effect in the last movement where the solo horn is required to play chords, by humming at the same time as playing. To be honest the effect didn’t come over very strongly on this recording - perhaps you need to see it being done live.

I’d love to say that this was a forgotten masterpiece but frankly I found it very disappointing. It seemed to me to ramble on without much shape and there was little to really catch the imagination. The combination of horn and violin as solo instruments is certainly usual but I didn’t think that Smyth had really worked out what she was going to do with them or how to spark them  off against each other. The middle movement ‘Elegy in Memoriam’ did have some attractive moments but again I am not really sure that it did enough to retain the attention throughout. 

This was the first piece of Ethyl Smyth that that I have head (I may have encountered the overture to The Wreckers years ago but I don’t remember it if I did) and unfortunately  nothing here has led me to want to explore more of her work. But some people do speak very highly of her and perhaps I need to give her music another chance.

Cornelius Trauer und Trost

Day 41

Cornelius Trauer und Trost

Margaret Price

Graham Johnson

Many people know and love the Christmas carol Three Kings from Persian Lands Afar even if they don’t know the composer. It was originally a song for voice and piano by Peter Cornelius but the version we usually hear is an arrangement with the piano part (a chorale) sung by a mixed choir. Cornelius (1824-1874) was part of the circle round Wagner. He was the composer of The Barber of Baghdad, which I consider to be one of the very best comic operas ever written. It has everything - a Sullivanesque patter song, some lovely solo arias, big ensembles where everybody is at sixes and sevens with each other and a beautiful evocation of the call to prayer by the distant voices of the muezzin.

This small cycle of 6 songs dates from 1854. It contains the famous song on one note Ein Ton which I mentioned in my note on Rossini (day 34). I knew that but had not heard the others. What I hadn’t realised is that the one note -  a B - was persuasive throughout the cycle, though it is only Ein Ton where the vocal line is restricted to that one note.  These were attractive songs to listen to - contemplative and generally subdued as one would expect with a title which translates as Grief and Consolations. The melodic line is attractive but these are not really ‘tune’ songs - much of the interest lies in the harmony and the way that the vocal line explores the direction in which the piano takes the music. These songs are very much in the tradition of Schumann rather than looking forward to Wolf. Although Cornelius was a Wagnerian there is not much here that sounds like Wagner, although of course in 1854 Tristan and The Ring were still years away from completion. 

There are several more short cycles by Cornelius - I look forward to getting to know them. 

 

Parry Symphony no 5

 Day 40

Parry Symphony no 5 in b minor

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Vassily Sinaisky

My first encounter with Parry was when we played the overture to an unwritten tragedy on a youth orchestra course. For some reason I really took against the big cadential moments in the score and as a futile act of protest mimed those bars rather than play them - as a humble second bassoon it made no difference to the sound of course. I must have been a very pretentious young man!

Parry is now of course most closely associated with Jerusalem, Blessed Pair of Sirens and I was glad. How wonderful it was to hear the last of those at the coronation, complete with the fanfares and vivats.

I’d head the 2nd symphony before but this was my first acquaintance with the 5th symphony - subtitled symphonic fantasia. Each movement has a subtitle and they all follow each other without a break. It is a comparatively late work (1912) but it very much inhabits the world of Dvořák and Brahms with the occasional hint of Richard Strauss. And in the trio of the 3rd movement I was momentarily reminded of the ländler style of Mahler - though it is a sobering through that Mahler was already dead at the time that this symphony was written.

The highlight for me was the second movement ‘love’ which was absolutely gorgeous. The third movement scherzo is surprisingly lively with some rhythmical quirks.Only the last movement was a bit of a let down. For me it never quite got going and was clearly intended to be an apotheosis at the end rather fell flat. But there was plenty of music here to enjoy and I certainly intend to catch up with the other symphonies. Whether I can quite bring myself to listen to Job, the subject of one of the most savage - and entertaining review - by George Bernard Shaw in his days as a music critic, remains to be seen. 

Stravinsky Mavra

Day 39

Stravinsky Mavra 

Soloists

CBC Symphony Orchestra

Igor Stravinsky

Stravinsky has been part of my musical life for as long as I can remember. Indeed on his death I wrote an in memoriam funeral march in his honour - thankfully it remains locked away never to be seen again!. Over the years I have played many of the major Stravinsky works and I've never found one which I didn't think was anything other than a masterpiece. Indeed even the scraps from his workbench - such as the little orchestral suites - are full of interest.

I didn't think that Stravinsky was going to be part of this project because I didn't think that there was anything of his that I hadn't heard, but going through the CD shelves I came across Mavra, which I think must previously have passed me by.  

I was really pleased to make its acquaintance. It is a miniature comic opera with a silly story about a girl who smuggles in her lover disguised as a woman to take the place  of her recently deceased maidservant. It is a very witty piece with all of the touches that one has come to expect from the composer. It didn't do well at its first performance  at the Paris Opéra, probably because it is an intimate piece and got lost on the vast stage there. Stravinsky remained very fond of the score and considered it one of his best works.

It is very much a transition piece coming at the end of the composer's early Russian period and his middle period neo-classical works. Indeed Richard Taruskin's monumental work Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions is subtitled A biography of the works through Mavra. The music is still very much in the tradition of Les Noces but does also have elements of the Neo-classical works which are to follow.  The scoring is unusual -  a full wind and brass section with full strength cellos and basses but with only two solo violins and a solo viola. Indeed those last three had so little do that I did sometimes wonder whether the composer had forgotten at times that he had included them. That sound of wind and lower strings is so redolent of the Symphony of Psalms that was to come a few years later - I'm sure that Stravinsky's experiments here with this sonority remained in his memory as he came to write the later work.

Tchaikovsky Hamlet fantasy overture

 Day 38

Tchaikovsky Hamlet fantasy overture

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Vassily Sinaisky

When I was a student acknowledging that you liked Tchaikovsky, while not exactly illegal was certainly not something to shout about. Even now there is a certain amount of snobbery about his music. I’ll have not of that. Tchaikovsky’s music is glorious and should be enjoyed for what it is - supremely well crafted, exciting and lyrical. I’ve played most of the key works and conducted a couple of the symphonies. Ultimately though it is the ballets which I love more than anything else. I’ve shocked some of my musical friends by saying that I would gladly consign the whole of Brahms’ output to the scrap heap if it meant that I could retain the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. And I mean it!

I don’t recall hearing the Hamlet overture before. I thought that it was a good piece but not perhaps quite top notch Tchaikovsky. All of the familiar features were there and this music shows a strong kinship with the Manfred Symphony and the Romeo and Juliet overture. Perhaps in the end it lacks a really strong melody - there are a couple of tunes which start well bit don’t quite hit the spot. But even non-top-notch Tchaikovsky has much to commend it and I certainly enjoyed the listening experience.

There is still much to explore in Tchaikovsky , particularly the operas, of which I only know a few bits and pieces. Perhaps I will include one of them later in this project.

Janáček The diary of one who disappeared

 Day 37

Janáček The diary of one who disappeared

Ian Bostridge

Ruby Philogene

Thomas Adès

My first experience of Janáček was listening to the Sinfonietta on an old second hand 10 inch mono LP on a small record player - I doubt that I got the full experience of the mass trumpet fanfares! I played the Lachian Dances in youth orchestra but although those are charming they are hardly representative of the composer's mature style. The only other Janáček I have played is the Glagolitic Mass - well it would be more accurate to say part of the Glagolitic Mass. It is horrendously difficult to perform and we had to abandon a couple of movements as beyond us. Even that wasn't enough, because I remember the performance breaking down completely at one point!

I was extremely fortunate to have as a lecturer and then as my PhD supervisor the great scholar of Czech music John Tyrrell. He was then beginning to make a name for himself as the UK's foremost expert on Janáček - partly through his very extensive notes for the ground breaking series of opera recordings conducted by Charles Mackerras. I read all of John's books on Janáček as they came out, culminating in his definitive two-volume biography of the composer. I got to know all of the operas during that time and they remain very close to my heart.

I knew about the diary of one who disappeared but I had never listened to it before today. What an extraordinary piece it is. Essentially it is a song cycle for tenor and piano but has a role for a female alto soloist and requires three offstage women's voices for several of the songs. It also has an extended movement for solo piano.  The whole thing takes about half an hour and within that time there are 22 separate songs, some lasting under a minute. The tenor line lies cruelly high - the last piece ends up with two spectacular top Cs and it must be an enormous undertaking to sing. The piano part is equally demanding.  The music is endlessly fascinating, with all of the characteristics of Janáček's mature style, including repeated short ostinato figures, speech rhythms and lyrical phrases punctuated by more declamatory outburst. 

I wouldn't like to listen to a live performance in a small room. With the tenor and the piano both at full belt the noise level is quite something. At times one felt that the composer was thinking in orchestral terms and that the piano was attempting to replicate the sound of a full orchestra, but at other times the music was reduced to a mere whisper.

You do need to be able to follow a translation closely when listening here - this is not a piece to lie back and absorb in the background. It probably needs several hearings before you get anything like a full understanding of what Janáček was trying to do. But for a first hearing I certainly got a lot out of this and will certainly go back to it again.

Copland Dance Symphony

 Day 36

Copland Dance Symphony

London Symphony Orchestra

Aaron Copland

Over the years I have played most of the famous Copland pieces and heard a few of the others but there is still much to discover. He is a really tricky composer to play - in many ways his rhythms are harder to grasp than those of Stravinsky, even in the Rite of Spring. They look deceptively simple on the page but he is very adept in missing out, or adding, a quaver here and there to knock you off your stride. I've never seen any of the ballets on stage but there is fascinating performance of Appalachian Springhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM5-CsI713g on YouTube with Martha Graham and what I take to be the original choreography. Very different to what you might imagine if you only know the music as a concert piece.

The Dance Symphony is an early work (1922-25). It derives from a ballet Grohg, based on a horror film. The ballet was never performed and the score was lost until it was rediscovered in the 1990s, but Copland took three of the movements from the piece to form this symphony in order to enter in into a competition for young composers. He shared the first prize and later in life was rather shamefaced about how he had 'cheated' by using existing material rather than composing something new for the competition.

You sense that in this early work Copland was very interested in pushing boundaries. The first movement - lively and playful - is a fairly typical piece of 1920s Neo classicism but the middle movement is surprisingly intense and dissonant and has some fierce climaxes which must have created quite an impression on first hearing - I did think however that it was a little too long for its material. The real interest is in the last movement - very jazz influenced with blaring trumpets and some exceptionally complicated rhythms - he even marks in the score at a few points how the conductor should beat in a different rhythm to that noted in the orchestral parts. I would have thought that was very confusing for the players but perhaps it works. Certainly the rhythmic complications in this movement are very demanding and I do wonder how the original performers coped with all of the twists and turns, particularly at the fast tempo that Copland demands.  I sense that the LSO players in this recording from the 1960s were on the edges of their seats concentrating like mad.

The Dance Symphony is never going occupy the same place in the repertory as the famous ballets but it was certainly well worth hearing. I'll probably go back to that last movement soon to try and work out exactly what he was doing with the rhythm.

Shostakovich Symphony no 8

 Day 35

Shostakovich Symphony no 8 in c minor op 65

WDR Sinfonieorchestra

Rudolf Barshai

Over the years I have listened to about half of the Shostakovich symphonies. Nos 1 and 10 were in my early LP collection and I head the first broadcast performance of no 15 on the radio - I remember the announcer being very coy about not revealing the musical quotations which the piece unexpectedly contained.  I've played symphonies no 5 and 10 and a couple of the concertos but I can't say that I have ever gone into a deep exploration of his output.

I'd never heard the 8th symphony before yet time and time again it seemed familiar. That is because it contains all of the tropes (cliches if you wanted to be more frank), associated with the composer. So we had lots of screamingly high woodwind writing (E flat clarinet to the fore), plenty of side drum and xylophone, gently pulsating string accompaniments to a wind solo, ostinato figures which went on for pages and a long ending on a sustain chord with various murmurings in the orchestra. I know it is probably sacrilegious to say so but at times this did seem as if Shostakovich was painting by numbers out of his well worn palette. 

Formally the piece is odd. A very long first movement in an arch structure and then three shorter movements before a longer finale. I have to say that I couldn't make head nor tail of what the composer was trying to do in that finale - the material seemed extremely commonplace and disjointed. But writers who I admire rate this symphony very highly and I am sure that I am missing something. As ever with Shostakovich you never quite know what level to take the music - how many layers of meaning are there below the surface - perhaps the composer himself didn't know. 

So quite a frustrating piece for me. All sorts of moments of interest along the way - the fluter tonguing effect for 4 flutes at one point certainly took me by surprise - and as a bassoon and contra player I certainly enjoyed seeing the challenges that Shostakovich set for the instruments. But as a musical experience I am afraid that this symphony rather passed me by.

Rossini Ciro in Babylonia

 Day 34

Rossini Ciro in Babylonia

Soloists

Württemberg Philharmonic Orchestra

Antonio Fogliani

Whenever I say to my musical colleagues that Rossini was one of the truly great composers they tend to give me a very odd look. The problem is we have Rossini all wrong. For orchestra players he is simply the composer of a handful of rather hackneyed overtures, often played with little rehearsal and no subtlety, and usually in corrupt editions, to be got out of the way before you get to the meat of the programme.

But that is a huge distortion. We have our music history all wrong. If you had asked somebody in 1830 who the most important living composer was the answer would almost certainly have been Rossini. There is an astonishing range to his music. If you haven't gone beyond the overtures try the trio from Le Comte Ory, the first act finale of L'Italiana in Algeri, or most of all the quite astonishing hymn to freedom at the end of Guilluame Tell, which has a breath and scale equal to anything in the repertoire.

Over the years I have got to know a good many of the Rossini operas. Over the last generation there has been a revolution in our approach to Rossini and recordings of virtually all of the operas are available, often in more than one version. In particular we can see that his range extended far beyond the comic operas which most people associate him to serious dramas and romantic adventures.

I'd not heard this particular opera before. It is a very early work, although early is a relative term for Rossini as he finished writing operas by his mid 30s. Mind you he had written about 40 of them by then (the exact number depends on how you count revisions).  He was 20 when he wrote the piece. He had already written a handful of lighter operas by then but this was the first of his serious operas to be staged.

It is based very loosely on the biblical story of the struggle between Belshazzar and the Medes and Persians. It would be idle to suggest it is anything approaching a forgotten masterpiece. Rossini was still learning his craft and the score is very uneven. There are lots of hints of what is to come, with some surprising harmonic twists and instrumental colours - One aria has a violin obligato, one a virtuoso bassoon introduction and as often in early Rossini the horns have plenty to do. There is a lot of vigour and energy and some interesting recitative passages. But at this stage in his development Rossini does sometimes make you wince at the gaucheness of some of the chord progressions and he has a habit of switching off at the ends of arias and make to with very hackneyed cadential figures. The famous Rossini crescendo makes a late appearance in the introduction to one of the arias in the second act.

There is one curiosity. In the second act there is a short aria for a minor character where the vocal line is all on one note!. Rossini remarked that the singer allotted to the role was not only 'impossibly ugly' but had a voice that was 'beneath contempt'. But he found that her B flat was not too bad and so she only sings that note while all of the interest is in the orchestra!  'One note' music can be quite interesting. Purcell wrote a fantasia on one note in which one of the viols plays only a C (Benjamin Britten famously played the one-note part on the viola in a recording of the piece). There is also a lovely song by Cornelius on one note, part of a song cycle which I will covering later in this series.

The famous episode of the writing on the wall does occur in this opera, but anybody expecting anything remotely resembling Belshazzar's Feast will be disappointed. There is no singing and the orchestra just plays some general purpose operatic storm music - something of a disappointment it must be said.

Listening to any of Rossini's serious operas for the first time can be disconcerting because there is no strict dividing line between 'serious' and 'comic' music - they all are within the same broad idiom. But the same happens with Verdi and we are so used to it that we don't really notice. 

This opera could never be a repertory piece - it is more of a curiosity than anything else. But it does show very clearly the roots of Rossini's style and contains enough flashes of inspiration to make it well worth listening to. But it isn't where I would start somebody off on their journey to appreciate Rossini - there are plenty of other operas I would recommend for that. 

Farrenc Symphony no 3

 Day 33

Farrenc Symphony no 3 in g minor op 36

Insula orchestra

Laurence Equilbey

I've mentioned before in this series the important collection of music by French women composers - Compostrices on the Bru Zane label.  One of the most distinctive composers there is Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) and the shorter pieces in the collection led me to explore some of her more substantial compositions. I had already heard the 1st symphony but this 3rd symphony was new to me.

It is a really impressive piece. Listening to it cold you would identify the composer as somebody who knew the symphonies of Haydn and Beethoven but was clearly from the early romantic period.  If you had to guess I think that you might well say that it was a previously unknown piece by Mendelssohn. What I don't think that you would do is recognise this as by a French composer (man or woman). The musical tradition in mid 19th century France was dominated by opera and any distinct French symphonic school didn't start to emerge until much later in the century. So any French composer who wanted to write a symphony had to turn to German models.

Farrenc writes in a full-blooded style with plenty of strong gestures. The orchestra she uses is small (double wind and no trumpets or trombones) but she uses it to great effect through - with some very innovative timpani writing, particularly in the way that that quiet timpani notes support the lyrical theme of the slow movement. Perhaps the most distinctive movement is the 3rd - a scherzo which I am sure that Mendelssohn would have been proud to call his own. The 4th movement is perhaps the weakest - it is rather episodic and at times seem to lose its way a bit but overall this is a symphony of real quality which certainly deserves a place in the repertory. The shadow of Beethoven looms large over the piece but this is no pale imitation but a strong and distinctive approach to symphonic form from a composer at the height of her powers. 

Delius Sea Drift

 Day 32

Delius Sea Drift

Thomas Hampson

BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales

Richard Hickox

I've never really 'got' Delius. The short orchestral pieces such as On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring are lovely but anything on a grander scale has largely passed me by. I did see A Village Romeo and Juliet on stage once and I must admit that it was the most tedious evening at the opera that I have ever experienced. It is a long wait until you get to the Walk to the Paradise Garden, and it is something of a surprise to find that the Paradise Garden is in fact a pub! 

My impression of Delius is that all too often his music meanders along rather aimlessly. Derek Cooke wrote an important essay on the Delius Violin Concerto to argue the case that the piece (and by extension much of Delius) was in fact was tightly constructed but when I heard a rare live performance of the concerto I couldn't really grasp what Cooke was saying.

But this project is about exploring new pieces and it was time for some Delius.  Most of the writers on Delius regard Sea Drift as one of his masterpieces so it was an obvious choice for today. Alas it didn't change my perceptions of the composer.

The beginning is undoubtedly rather beautiful but once the piece got going my interest waned. I find the constant chromatic shifts in the harmony cloying and the vocal line, which I think is meant to be ecstatic, simply monotonous. I just couldn't find any way into the music at all.

Perhaps there are treasures in Delius that I will finally appreciate one day, but for the moment he is not on my list of composers that I must explore further.