McEwen Solway Symphony

 Day 89

McEwen Solway Symphony

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Alisdair Mitchell

This symphony has a place as a footnote in musical history because it was the first British symphony ever to be recorded. The exactly circumstances of what led to this are a little unclear as the various online sources about this contradict each other - there may have been a competition involved but given that the recording was made 10 years after the symphony was written the position might be a little more complicated.

McEwan (1868-1948) was a respected figure in musical education, being associated with the Royal Academy of Music both as a student and teacher - he ended up as principal of the college. Among his pupils was William Alwyn, whose symphony I wrote about yesterday.

I had never heard any of MeEwen’s music so had little idea what to expect. If anything I thought it might be a rather fey piece in a Mendelssohnian idiom with lots of Scottish folk tunes. But it was a much more robust piece that that, especially in the first movement, which is by some way the finest of the three. It had a symphonic drive and structure which was certainly well worth of respect. The material in the other two movements was always attractive, but I think that the composer didn’t quite know how to develop it and there was rather too much reliance on a few musical gestures.

The language is clearly late romantic and has its roots in Wagner and Liszt. There were a few moments in the middle movement where the texture suddenly opened up into a world which was almost Debussian but that was the exception. The orchestration was confident - I don’t know how much experience McEwan had had of hearing his own orchestral music actually being performed, but clearly he knew exactly what he was doing here. Some of the horn writing was spectacular and a few of the big horn moments in the third movement would not have been out of place in a John Williams film score!

So perhaps more than a curiosity - particularly the first movement - but not a forgotten masterpiece. But it does go so show just how much good symphonic music was being written in this country in the first half of the 20th century. There is so much more to discover.