Holmboe: Symphony no 10

Day 273

Vagn Holmboe: Symphony no 10

Aarhus Symphony Orchestra

Owain Arwel Hughes

I had heard the name Holmboe but I didn’t know anything about his music, his country or even when was active, other than it was in the 20th century. His dates are 1909-1996 and he was Danish, eventually becoming a professor at the Royal Academy of music in Copenhagen. He wrote 13 symphonies in total - I chose the 10th - written in 1970-71 at random as a way of sampling his output.

It is in a post Sibelius/Nielsen idiom. More chromatic and dissonant than the work of either composer but recognisably using the same approach to building a symphony based on short repeated motives and gradual building up to a climax over a sustained period. There was a lot to enjoy here , particularly in the last movement which built up the tension in a compelling way before letting the music subside into a long and rather beautiful slow wind down. This was high quality music though I did think that the percussion was rather overused at times - some of the cymbal crashes did seem out of place.  But all in all another composer I am glad to have encountered. One of the key benefits of this project has been to extend the breadth of my musical experience and had I not embarked on it I doubt very much that I would have ever listening to anything by Holmboe.

Petterson: Symphony no 7

Day 272

Allan Petterson: Symphony no 7

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra

Antal Dorati

Allan Petterson has the reputation of being one of the bleakest music ever wrttten. Certainly there is nothing lighthearted or joyful in his music if this piece is anything to to by - and from what I have read it certainly is. Petterson had a difficult life. He was in near constant pain from Arthritis and was for most of his life he was confined to a small apartment. He had been a professional viola player but after he because too ill to play he devoted himself to composition, eventually receiving a small state grant.

The 7th symphony was the first of his works to receive international attention following the release of this recording by Antal Dorati. It is a single movement work of about 40 minutes. It is austere and long-breathed with a real sense of organic growth. The music of Sibelius is obviously at the root of Petterson’s music style though there are elements of Shostakovich and Nielsen in his makeup. What is took me by surprise was the lyrical section for strings about two thirds of the way through. Heard on its own it could almost have been mistaken for Vaughan Williams or ever early Tippett. The release of tension that this brought to the piece made the return to the more austere material of the opening section even more gripping. 

This was remarkable music. Certainly not easy listening but I am glad that it gave it the time that it needed for proper study. Whether I can summon up the energy to hear all of the 17 symphonies (two incomplete) is another matter. Certainly not something I can tackle in the immediate short term.

Louis Glass: Symphony no 6

Day 271

Louis Glass: Symphony no 6

South African Broadcast Corporation Symphony Orchestra

Peter Marchbank

Louis Glass was a Danish composer (1864-1936) who was an almost exact contemporary of Nielsen. I first came across him when the slow movement of his 5th symphony was included on a sampler CD. I thought that it was a beautiful piece of late romantic music with tinges of Bruckner. I purchased the complete work on CD. The rest of that symphony was attractive but perhaps not quite on the same level. That symphony has the unfortunate title “ Svastika’ - nothing to do with the Nazis but a reference to the ancient Vedic symbol.

The 6th symphony has the subtitle Skjoldungeat, which translates as The birth of the Scylidigs, they are the mythical creatures of Danish mythology.  I enjoyed the piece a lot - like the 5th symphony the slow movement is perhaps the highlight, but it is all music of high quality which deserves wider appreciation. The style is unashamedly late romantic but has some tinges of modernism - the influence of Stravinsky can be felt in place though, perhaps surprising, I couldn’t discern any commonality with the music of Nielsen - his symphonies have an astringency that is not present here.

Alfred HIll: Symphony no 5

Day 270

Alfred Hill: Symphony no 5 The Carnival

Queensland Symphony Orchestra

Wilfred Lehmann

Alfred Hill was one of the earliest Australian composers in the western art tradition. He had an extensive training in Leipzig, where he met many of the leading musical figures of the time and then became a leading figure in the Australian musical establishment. Indeed by the time of his death in 1960 aged 90 he was the Grand Old Man of Australian musical.

This symphony dates from 1955 though you would never have guessed it. You might well have placed in in the 1880s or 1890s. The music idiom is conservative to the extent that Strauss, Stravinsky and Schoenberg may as well never existed. This is partly explained by the fact that this is a reworking of a string quartet dating from  the 1920s, but even then the music would have seemed old fashioned. It reminded me of Elgar is his lighter mood or even Eric Coates or one of the other light music composers that were such a feature of English music in the mid 20th century.

That is not to disparage the score at all - merely to put it into context. On its own terms is was a highly enjoyable piece - tuneful, lively and not too long. I can imagine it going down well with audiences. But nobody, and I expect that this would include the composer, would ever argue that this is an important contribution to the symphonic repertoire.

Roussel: Bacchus and Ariane suite no 2

Day 269

Roussel: Bacchus and Ariane suite no 2

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Walter Weller

I came across Roussel as a student (it might even have been at school) where my recording of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice included The Spider’s Feast as a coupling. I suppose that I must have listened to at at least once but I have no memory of it and I don’t recall having heard anything anything else by Roussel since then. 

I found the opening of this, the second suite, completing listening - Roussel conjured up an impressive atmosphere with some highly sensitive orchestration. But as the piece went on I found my interest waining. I couldn’t quite get onto the right wavelength - it seemed to me that what we had here as little more than warmed up Ravel and Debussy. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood, because many people speak very highly of the score, but although the suite is short I didn’t find that it maintained my interest, even though I was following it with a score.

This ends this part of the project exploring some ballet music. Next I am going to turn to symphonies, exploring some works by composers on the fringes of the repertoire.

Ginastera: Estancia

Day 268

Ginastera: Estancia ballet suite

Josep Pons

I’ve very little experience of Ginastera. I do remember a pianist who had just played a concerto with our orchestra playing a piece of his as an encore after her performance - she seemed to enjoy the freedom of playing a solo much more than she did playing a concerto. Otherwise I am not conscious of ever having heard anything else he wrote.

This short suite from his 1941 ballet has a slightly curious history in that the planned performance of the ballet was postponed for several years and so the work was first heard as a suite. The suite is in 4 movements and is full of Latin American inspired rhythms. The music is very Coplandesque -indeed some of it seems almost direct imitation but it doesn’t quite have the bite of Copland’s best scores. Indeed at times it almost seemed to be a slightly pale imitation. I imagine that it is highly effective as music to dance to but frankly I found parts of it rather routine as a pure concert piece.

Massenet: Le Cid Ballet music

Day 267

Massenet: Le Cid Ballet music

London Symphony Orchestra

Richard Bonynge

My first experience of Massenet was playing the Scenes Pittoresque in youth orchestra. Other than a performance of the meditation from Thais that was my experience of Massenet until recently, when I have started to explore the operas. He reputation has never quite reached the same level as it achieved during his lifetime but as I listen to more of his music the more impressed I am by it - he has an effortless mastery which I find very attractive.

This ballet music from the opera Le Cid has had a life in the concert hall detached from the opera itself. I found it hugely enjoyable. It is no profoundly but it has real charm, melodic distinction and energy. I imagine that it is extremely effective as dance music but it certainly works its own right. There is a Spanish flavour to the score - a reminder of the old adage that the best Spanish music is written by French composers, Only the last movement disappoints: it recaps on material from the previous movement in a way which seems a little obvious and unsubtle after what has gone before. 

Although I don’t consciously remember listening to this music before parts of it seem familiar. I suspect that at some point bits of the music were used in TV or films where the spirit of the ballet was being invoked.

Adam: Giselle

Day 266

Adam: Giselle

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden

Mark Ermler

Giselle is one of the great pillars of the ballet repertoire. Like many of these 19th century ballets the music has been constantly adapted for new versions of the staging, often with additional music contributed by other composers. So there are several version of Giselle on record. This one claims to be complete and based on Adam’s original score although I have read that there are some other recordings which are even more authentic.

Whatever the truth this is a lovely score. I was surprised that some of it was familiar - I’ve never seen the ballet and am not aware of a suite like those for other large ballets, but over the years some of this music must have been used as background or in isolated extracts. The music is constantly inventive, by turns melodic, humorous, rhythmic and dramatic. It is more of a ‘numbers’ score than the more symphonic Sylvia I listened to a couple of days ago but on its own terms it is delightful and highly accomplished.  It gave me great pleasure to listen to the whole score.

Lambert: Horoscope

Day 265

Lambert: Horoscope

BBC concert orchestra

Barry Wordsworth

I’ve always loved Lambert’s The Rio Grande, but apart from his short piano piece Elegaic Blues I don’t think that I have heard anything else of his. He was an important figure in the ballet world in the period before and during the Second World War not only as a conductor (he was the conductor for the Bliss I listened to a couple of days ago) and arranger but also as a composer. This ballet, written for Margot Fonteyn (with whom he was having an affair at the time) has a bit of a chequered history. The Vic Wells ballet was on tour to the Netherlands in 1940 when the Germans invaded and in the rush to escape the score and orchestral parts got left behind. There are conflicting views about what other sources of the music remain. This recording is described as the complete ballet but also as a suite.

This score is very much in the same tradition as the Bliss I heard earlier - bright and breezy with hints of modernism and some rhythmic flair. Parts of it do sound very similar to The Rio Grande and I suspect that Lambert was a composer of limited means who stuck to what he knew best. There is some appealing lyrical music in the slower sections, sometimes a little reminiscent of Delius.  I did enjoy listening to this - probably a little more than I did the Bliss. It does have a freshness and immediacy which does work well in purely musical terms.

Delibes: Sylvia

Day 264

Delibes: Sylvia

New Philharmonia Orchestra

Richard Bonyge

Sylvia is one of the most celebrated of ballet scores. Tchaikovsky considered it superior to his own Swan Lake and it is one of the few scores of the major 19th century ballets which is performed more or less in the form that the composer intended: so many of the famous scores have been tinkered with over the years to the extent that it is always clear who actually wrote which sections. That is a sign of just how significant this ballet is.

I have known the suite from Sylvia all my life, but this was the first time I had heard the whole ballet score. It was a real pleasure to hear the familiar extracts in context. There is real drama in this score as well as charm and humour. It is more that just an assemblage of dances - Delibes uses motives quite skilfully  to advance the drama. The orchestration is highly sophisticated included an early use of the saxophone as a solo instrument. This really is a ballet score that stands on its own two feet.

Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals

Day 263

Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden

Constant Lambert

Having used the last week or so to fill in some of the gaps of major composers who have not so far featured in this project - there are still some important names to catch up with before the year is out - I return to a thematic approach for the next section of listening and will explore some ballet music. I have already covered some of the obvious composers already this year and as I am still on track to listen to different composer each day I can’t revisit them, but there is plenty more to go at. 

I know little of the music of Sir Arthur Bliss. I enjoy his early piece, Rout, for wordless soprano and small ensemble but other than that is it only some of the ceremonial and film music that it is at all familiar,

Miracle in the Gorbals was written for the Sadlers Well Ballet during the war and first performed by them in 1944 conducted by Constant Lambert, who conducted this recording of the suite drawn from the full-length ballet. I enjoyed it as a typical piece of British music of the 1930s and 1940s - vigorous and melodic with some hints of modernism but all safely within an established musical idiom. To be honest, however, it didn’t leave a lasting impression - I suspect that it was very effective as ballet music but I am not sure that is sustains enough interest on its own.  It may well be that I say the same thing about several of the ballet scores in this part of the project.

Scarlatti: Six Sonatas

Day 262

Dominico Scarlatti: Six Sonatas - K262 to K267

Scott Ross

How do you begin to get to grips with the output of a composer who wrote 555 sonatas? Over the years I have head a few of them and had a go at playing some. I got the big CD box of Scott Ross playing them all in a sale a couple of years ago and sometimes dip into it - but I haven’t diligently studied any of them.

For this project I decided to pick a group of sonatas at random and as this is day 262 I started with sonata 262 and look in the next five.  This is fascinating music - completely unpredictable both within pieces and between them. At time one is reminded that Scarlatti was born in the same year as J S Bach but at other times he seems to occupy a completely different world. The keyboard techniques he uses are highly varied and at times the harmony takes him to very strange places. 

I had thought that Scarlatti’s work was well known to composers of his time but that was not the case at all. Only a small number of the sonatas were published in his lifetime and it is not known how widely his work was disseminated. Chopin certainly used some of the sonatas in his teaching, but it was probably only in the 20th century that the music became more widely known, with several notable pianists, including Horowitz and Dinu Lipatti featuring them in recitals.

I don’t suppose that I will ever hear the entire set - at one a day it would take the best part of two years - but I am sure that I will continue to sample their delights from time to time.

Monteverdi: 8th book of madrigals

Day 261

Monteverdi: 8th book of madrigals

Concerto Italiano

Ronaldo Allesandri

This is astonishing music.

I first encountered Monteverdi at school. We sang Beatus Vir and I also remember listening to Chiome d’oro and Zefiro torna in A level class and being amazed at the chromatic harmony. Since then I have heard most of the major works but I don’t have a close knowledge of the madrigals so this was a good opportunity to explore some previously unknown music.

I said above that this is astonishing music - how much more astonishing it must have been to listeners at the time. For those who have grown up with polyphonic church music the continuo-based chordal writing, the vigorous word setting and the use of instruments would have seemed as startling as the Rite of Spring was to audiences 100 years ago. There is great beauty in the music as well as drama, humour and pathos. In many ways it is more modern than much music written 100 years later. There can be few composers who changed the whole course of music in the way that Monteverdi did.

Josquin: Missa L'homme armé Super Voces Musicales

Day 260

Josquin: Missa L'homme armé Super Voces Musicales

Tallis Scholars

Peter Phillips

Josquin is perhaps the key composer in the transition from the medieval era to the Renaissance. He lived from about 1450 to 1521 and achieved great fame in his lifetime. Indeed he is one of the first composers whose fame extended beyond his lifetime: indeed he has been described as the first composer whose music was not forgotten after his death.  He composed a substantial amount of choral music, including at least a dozen masses (the exact number is not known because of problems of attribution). This is one of two based on the popular song L'homme armé, which throughout history has been a source which composers have returned to again and again.

The musical style is fascinating - there are some of the long lines typical of Renaissance polyphony but also extensive uses of shorter phrases. Some of the rhythmic complexity is reminiscent of late Medieval music and there are a few moments of quite pungent harmony. Altogether the music makes a very powerful impression - though as I have said before in this project whether the original performances sounded quite like this immaculate and supremely well controlled rendition must be open to question.

The Agnus Dei was particularly haunting. Josquin's canonic mastery here is quite extraordinary but it is the effect rather than the means that matters - the long breathed melody in the top part with more rapidly moving parts underneath bring the mass to a haunting conclusion.

I must have heard some Josquin at university, but I don't have any memories of it. But I am sure that I will follow this mass up with an exploration of more of his music. 

Busoni: Piano concerto

Day 259

Busoni: Piano concerto

John Ogdon

John Aldis Choir

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniell Revenaugh

This concerto has two main claims to fame. First is it perhaps the longest piano concerto ever written (this performance lasts nearly 70 mins) and secondly because it includes a part for offstage male chorus in the last movement.  I'm not conscious of having heard any of Busoni's music before so I wasn't sure what to expect from this work. I imagined that it would be rather intense and mysterious with philosophical overtones but it was nothing like that. To be honest I found it a complete rag-bag of a piece with no overall coherence. The first movement was largely Brahmsian in style - with an absurdly long orchestral introduction before the solo piano came in for the first time - and else where there were traces of Liszt and of Russian music. There was even what I thought was a very heavy handed attempt to write in a light hearted elegant French style. That did not work at all - much better to leave that sort of thing to Saint- Säens!. As for the choral finale I had no idea what he was trying to achieve. For a long time he seemed to have forgotten that he was writing a piano concerto because the solo instrument was conspicuously silent. There was some quite effective music here on its own terms but it seems completely out of place. And the movement was spoilt by the end, which was almost embarrassingly gauche.

As will be clear from the above this is not a work I will be returning to - I thought it was awful. It has its admirers so perhaps it is just me, but I really can't see what all of the fuss is about. Reading about the composer I get the impression that his later music is in a more developed style - perhaps one day I will try again, but for the moment this goes down as one of the most disappointing pieces I have listened to in this series.

Mahler: Das Klagende Lied

Day 258

Mahler: Das Klagende Lied

Soloists

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

Simon Rattle

I’ve never been an out-and-out Mahler enthusiast. I have played several of the symphonies and it is always a fascinating experience being in the middle of those fascinating textures. But I don’t buy into the whole ethos and I do often feel frustration that the music is over extended and that Mahler simply couldn’t stop himself pouring everything he had into the music.  After all he did say that a symphony must be ‘like the world’.

Das Klagende Lied is the only major piece of Mahler that I have not heard. It is an early work (1879-80) which went through many revisions and perhaps never reached a final form. It was originally in 3 movements but Mahler dropped the first movement early on and it was only rediscovered and performed years after his death.  I listened to the full 3 movement version. 

This was an astonishingly mature work for a composer barely out of his teens. What struck me most was how early Mahler had achieved his characteristic orchestral sound - the score was instantly recognisable at Mahler and couldn’t have been by anybody else. It terms of the musical material there is clearly some Wagnerian influence and touches of Bruckner and even Brahms, but I don’t think that anybody else was writing music quite like this at the time. There is a huge amount of secular German choral music by major composer that is almost completely unknown and perhaps if we knew that better we might understand the roots of this piece a bit more, but it does strike me as wholly original.

That’s not to say that everything works. There are moments of bombast which seems rather gauche and some of the solo vocal writing is rather awkward. But there is also music of real quality here - particularly in the more reflective moments. The end is very haunting, though I think that it was a mistake to end with a sudden loud chord after the music died away to almost nothing. 

The young Mahler clearly had enormous self confidence to write such a big work. Originally he required 6 harps, 11 soloists and and a children’s choir. Even after revision the piece still required large forces, including an offstage band of 15 wind instruments and percussion which plays for no more than 2 or 3 minutes. 

It is interesting to speculate that had he called the piece a symphony it might well have become part of the accepted cycle - if the choral 8th symphony is accepted as a symphony surely this could have been as well. It might have become much more of a repertory piece rather than the rarity that it now is.

Weber: Abu Hassan

Day 257

Weber: Abu Hassan

Soloists

Dresden Statskapelle Orchestra and Chorus

Heinz Rögner

Weber has a curious place in the operatic world. There is no doubt that his operas are hugely important in the development of the genre but they don’t feature as prominently in the operatic repertoire as they should. Of the big three two - Oberon and Euryanthe - are best with problematic libretti and structural - and the other Der Freischütz is so immersed in German culture that it doesn’t translate well into other cultural environments.

Abu Hassan is a short one act opera dating from 1811. I found it delightful. It occupies an interesting place between Die Zauberflöte and the operas of Rossini. It is as light as a feather and full of attractive melodies and piquant orchestration. I am sure that it would make a really good curtain raiser.

Martinů: Ariane

Day 256

Martinů: Ariane

Soloists

Essener Philharmoniker

Thomáš Netopil

I don’t have much experience of Martinů. I’ve played a couple of his shorter pieces and have heard at least one of his symphonies but don’t really have a feel for what he is about as a composer. This short opera is a late piece which he wrote as a displacement activity while working on his large scale final opera The Greek Passion. The story is a deliberate homage to Monteverdi’s Arianna’s lament and the work finishes with an (in the context of a short opera) extended lamentation for the solo soprano. This certainly had something of the sprit of Monteverdi though it was never mere pastiche. Perhaps the most immediate attractive music was the three short interludes between scenes. Neo-classical Stravinsky here was the most obvious point of reference - indeed the first of the three could have been incorporated into the Rakes Progress without anybody suspecting anything untoward. 

I suspect that the ‘real’ Martinů is found in the longer operas and perhaps I need to devote some time to them. But I certainly enjoyed listening to Ariane , though I wouldn’t rate it, at least on first hearing, as an out-and-out masterpiece.

Holst: Sāvitri

 Day 255

Holst: Sāvitri

Soloists

Purcell Singers

English Chamber Orchestra

Imogen Holst

Like most people my first experience of Holst was The Planets - I think that it was the first or second LP that I ever purchased. I've played it a couple of time since. I also played the two splendid suites for military band in the youth wind band and conducted the ballet music to the Perfect Fool. I've heard other bits and pieces over the years but have never explored his music in depth.

Apparently Holst had many attempts at writing an opera before embarking on Sāvitri. He had tried writing very large scale opera before tuning to this this early example of a chamber opera - for 3 solo voices, female chorus. double string quartet, double bass, two flutes and cor anglais.  I thought that it was a very effective piece, particularly in this performance led by the incomparable Janet Baker. It is quite unlike much of the music being written in England at the time (1916). The textures are light and there is considerable rhythmic freedom. I particularly enjoyed the very inventive music for the wordless female chorus -a reminder that Holst was working on The Planets, which of course uses a wordless female chorus in the final movement.

The only passages which didn't quite come off for me were the occasional moments for the full ensemble , where one detected traces of the Wagnerian influence that Holst had come under earlier in his life and which had not quite worked though his system. But all in all it was a fascinating work and I can understand why so many commentators have rated it highly. Perhaps the very stilted language of the libretto (the composer's own) might get in the way for some modern listeners but that is a small price to pay for some really absorbing music.

Puccini: Il Tabarro

Day 254

Puccini: Il Tabarro

Soloists

BBC Singers

BBC Philharmonic

Gianandrea Noseda

Puccini was definitely beyond the pale in my student days. In his book Opera as Drama Joseph Kerman famously described Tosca as a ‘shabby little shocker’ and that was fairly typical of the prevailing ethos of the time.  Yes you could go to the opera house and enjoy a good weep at La Bohème, but you couldn’t regard it as music worthy of serious attention. As a result it did take me a while to appreciate Puccini, but I how can see that he was an absolute master of musical drama - indeed his sense of dramatic pacing is second to none.

I’d not heard Il Tabarro before. I thought it was a tremendous piece. The opening scene sets the atmosphere beautifully with the gentle rocking of the river  and the noises of the city at sunset beautifully portrayed. Then Puccini has some fun evoking the music of the organ grinder with clarinets playing in consecutive sevenths. Then as the drama unfold the mood darkens and Puccini gradually drives up the tension. He was a master at creating the atmosphere of menace. Perhaps only the very end is a slight disappointment - the final chords do seem a bit perfunctory  - I have seen it suggested elsewhere the Puccini didn’t always quite know how to end his operas and I can see why people might think that.

What struck me is Puccini’s supreme mastery as an orchestrator. The contrast with Strauss’ Daphne was very telling. Strauss is usually held up one of the great orchestrators but I found so much of that score self indulgent with thick textures filled with superfluous detail. Puccini by contrast is a model of clarity with not a note wasted and a real ear for orchestral sonority. He was a complete man of the theatre in everything he did.

Walton: The Bear

Day 253

Walton: The Bear

Soloists

English Chamber Orchestra

James Lockhart

My first encounter with Walton was playing Crown Imperial in youth orchestra and I got to know Facade when I was still at school. Since then I have heard most of the major works but The Bear was new to me. It is a chamber opera for 3 voices and a small orchestra and was first performed at the Aldburgh Festival in  1967. 

The obvious comparison is with Britten, and there are certainly some moments in the score which could be mistaken for Britten but Walton's score is more eclectic, with a lot of hints at other music, from French Cabaret, to English Music Hall and , apt for an opera set in Russian, more than a hint of Stravinsky. There are also passages which could have come straight out of Bernstein's Candide. Walton clearly had a lot of fun writing it. It is perhaps surprising that he took so long before writing an opera. Facade pointed out his gift for musical humour early in his career and there are plenty of witty moments elsewhere in his output.

I certainly enjoyed listening to this. Perhaps the decision to have two low male voices and a mezzo soprano made some passages a bit heavier going that they might otherwise have been but the opera moves along at a good pace and, as ever with Walton, the orchestration is virtuosic and always inventive. The score indicated quite a few places where there could be cuts and perhaps Walton was concerned that the opera was perhaps just a little too long for a one-act piece.  It was first performed in conjunction with Berkeley's Castaway but more recent revivals have coupled with with a variety of other pieces. It is perhaps too long as a curtain raiser but not long enough as a complete opera in its own right.

Strauss: Daphne

Day 252

Strauss: Daphne

Soloists

WDR symphony orchestra and chorus

Semyon Bychkov

I’m back from my holiday so no more sea-inspired pieces. Instead I want to start to fill in some of the gaps of major composers who I have not yet featured in the project. The first is Richard Strauss. I’ve never been a Strauss enthusiast - indeed I like to shock my orchestral friends and colleagues by saying that I much prefer the music of Johann Strauss to that of Richard!  To me Strauss often has dazzling ideas at the start of a piece but then rather falls into a rut. I recently played Don Juan: the opening is of course a marvel, but so much of what follows is rather routine and even manufactured. You could say the same for many of the big Strauss tone poems - Ein Heldenleben has a very striking first couple of minutes but after that I am not sure that I have ever managed to pay attention long enough to hear the whole work.

The only Strauss opera I have seen is Salome, which I have seen a couple of times - once rather incongruously in a big tent in Sheffield, though I have also heard a few of the others, Daphne however was new to me, I have to say I found it really hard going. I find Strauss’ harmonic language difficult to bear at time with its constant chromatic slipping and sliding and his orchestration is so thick and complex that is becomes glutenous far too often. The constant filigree detail in the texture and the sheer number of notes to me rapidly becomes very tiring. 

At the end of the opera the heroine gets absorbed into a tree. The transformation music is often held up as one of the great moments in the composer’s output. I certainly found it to be the most appealing part of the opera but even so I can’t say that I was gripped by it in the way that I half expected to be, judging by some of the descriptions of the music that I have read. Those very high violin figures at the end were quite hard to listen to and gave the music an edge which I don’t think that the composer could really have intended. 

I had hoped that devoting some time to this opera and giving it serious attention might have opened up the music for Strauss for me in a way that has not happened before. But alas it didn’t. Daphne is a comparatively short opera but time listening to it did seem to pass very slowly. It certainly won’t be trying out any of the longer Strauss operas any time soon.

Langgaard: Symphony no 15 Storm at sea

Day 251

Langgaard: Symphony no 15 Storm at sea

Danish National Symphony Orchestra

Danish National Choir

Thomas Dausgaard

Langgaard (1893-1952) was a Danish composer of the post Nielsen generation - indeed as a youngster he had counterpoint lessons from Nielsen. He seems to have been a remote figure at odd with the Danish musical community and his music was largely forgotten until a revival on CD at the end of the last century.

This symphony dates from 1949 though it incorporates music written in 1937. It was not performed until 1976.  It is in four continuous movements. Like the Hanson earlier in the week it took me by surprise in including a choir and, this time, also a solo baritone in the last movement.  For a work written in the late 1940s it is curiously old fashioned - indeed much of the last movement - a choral description of the storm - would hardly be out of place in The Flying Dutchman.  Taken on its own terms however this is attractive music with passages of great power. Curiously the brief second movement seems to belong to a different world. It evokes the feeling of a Viennese waltz! I've no idea what its significance was in a piece about the sea. Langgaard wrote 16 symphonies altogether and a host of other music, including an opera Antikrist. It seems that that was an earlier work written in a more modernist style - it was only late that Langgaard started writing in a late-romantic style, partly it seems as a protest of the dominance of Nielsen in Danish musical life.

Skalkottas: The Sea

Day 250

Skalkottas: The Sea

Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Byron Fidetzis

This was a real surprise. I knew that Skalkottas was a pupil of Schoenberg and had a reputation as a modernist so I was expecting a tough listen. But this was very different. It was a series of dance pieces (the work started out as a ballet) in an idiom which seemed to belong to the nationalist dances that one finds in Russian or Czech music. The music dates from 1948 but there was very little that couldn’t have been composed at least 50 years earlier. The music was pleasant enough and I could imagine it being a good accompaniment to dance tp, but on its own it didn’t make a great impression. I need to understand more about Skalkottas and how he seems to have had such a split musical personality.

Glanville-Hicks: SInfonia di Pacifica

Day 249

Peggy Glanville-Hicks: Sinfonia di Pacifica

Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

Richard Mills

Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) was one of the first, if not the first, Australian female composer to take a mark on the international music scene. She had a thorough musical education in England and Europe, studying with, among others, Vaughan Williams, Egon Wellesz and Nadia Boulanger. 

This symphony was inspired by a voyage over the Pacific Ocean from New Orleans to Australia  - it was written in 1952 and first performed the following year. It it is three quite short movements. The first is a fairly typical Walton-Hidemith style - I didn’t find it particularly memorable. The other two movements were more distinctive. The middle movement was a beautiful lyric piece with strong melodic ideas for the solo oboe. The finale was a lively folk-dance/jazz inspired piece - lightweight but good fun. It reminded me of the Juba dance in the Florence Price symphony which I played in last year. 

I don’t know how typical of Glanville-Hicks’ work this piece is, but anybody who could write that slow movement definitely deserves our admiration. There is a recording of her opera Sappho available, and that might be worth exploring.

Hanson: Symphony no 7 - the sea

Day 248

Hanson: Symphony no 7 The Sea

Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Chorus

Gerard Schwarz

I had come across Hanson as a composer some years ago when I took part in a performance of his second symphony - the Romantic - but I haven’t heard anything else by him.

I didn’t have a score of this piece so I was rather surprised to hear a choir enter after the introduction. It turns out that this is a choral symphony using texts by Walt Whitman. Of course that immediately brings a comparison with Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony. I played that a few years ago and have to say that after the arresting opening I found it rather hard going.  So given that Hanson’s music is hewn from the same cloth as Vaughn Williams I did wonder why we needed a second choral sea symphony. Hanson explained that he had been haunted by the idea of the sea all his life and wanted to bring his symphony career to end with a sea-based piece. He was over 80 when he completed the work.

There were some exciting moments in the score and a majestic finish but this was not a work to my taste . I’m not a great Vaughan Williams fan and second-hand Vaughan Williams - which is what a lot of this piece sounds like - has ever less attraction for me. So I will let this one pass by.

Ibert: Symphonie Marine

Day 247

Ibert: Symphonie Marine

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Louis Frémaux

I knew Ibert from his riotous Divertissement and a few shorter pieces but this Symphonie Marine was new to me. It dates from 1931 but apparently the composer forbad performances of the work until after his death, Quite why nobody knows because there is certainly nothing remotely offensive or objectionable about the peice. On the contrary is a fairly typical light-hearted confection of the type that French composers were so good at turning out. The scoring evokes the world of Ravel and Debussy, particularly in the use of the harp, but there is also a prominent saxophone part which does bring some jazz overtones.

An enjoyable diversion then - no masterpiece but then it is unreasonable to expect every work to be a masterpiece. B roads can be more interesting than motorways.

Takemitsu: Towards the sea

Day 246

Takemitsu: Towards the sea

Toronto new music ensemble

Takemitsu was the first Japanese composer (as least as far as I am aware) who entered the mainstream of western music. I did heard some of his music when I was a student but I would struggle to name any particular piece.

Towards the sea is a shortish 3 movement piece for flute and guitar. Had it not been for the title I would not have detected association between the music and the sea. It seemed to me that this was a fairly anonymous piece - not unpleasant but having little to say. There was lots of gentle ‘plink-plonk’ on the guitar and flutter tounging on the flute but it seems rather like a couple of experienced musicians who had a background in jazz as well as classical music sitting down to improvise. Nothing wrong in that, of course, but there didn’t seem to be anything of substance here.

Bloch: Poems of the Sea

Day 245

Ernest Bloch: Poems of the Sea

Malmõ Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo

Bloch was one of the first major Swiss composers, although he spent music of his life in the USA, where he had a distinguished academic career. I had heard his Schelomo but as far as I am aware hadn’t heard anything else of his. 

These three Poems of the Sea were originally written, as far as I can establish, for solo piano in 1922 but were orchestrated by the composer soon afterwards. I listened to the orchestral version and without knowing their original as piano music you would never suspect that they started out as keyboard pieces - the orchestration is very convincing. The first of the three has some echoes of Ravel but otherwise this is fairly conventional early 20th century neo-romantic music tinged with some folk-song elements. To be honest they didn’t make much of an impression. There were not unpleasant by any means but there was nothing distinctive here and the last movement seemed to me to be bombastic in places, particularly towards the end. So ultimately there was nothing much here to detain me.

Henry Hadley: The Ocean

Day 244

Henry Hadley: The Ocean

Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra

McClaughlin Williams

I’m on holiday this week so it seems a good idea to explore music inspired by water and the sea.

Our view of American music in the early 20th century is now somewhat distorted as we see it largely through the eyes of Ives and the other modernist - I explored some of this earlier in this project - but if you been a typical American concert goer at the time these composers would either have been totally unknown or regarded as nothing more than eccentrics. Instead it is much more likely that you would have been aware of more mainstream figures writing in a more overtly romantic idiom.

Henry Hadley (1871-1937) was a typical figure in this tradition - he was American born but studied in Vienna and was part of the Brahms circle. Back in the US he did important work as a conductor and teacher. This symphonic poem dates from 1921, though there is little in it that could not have been written 50 years earlier. I found it a highly attractive work, obviously well written and effectively scored. But after the rather striking open ending there was nothing particularly distinctive about it - it could have been written by any number of composers anywhere in Europe or the USA. I don’t know if I was influenced by the fact that Hadley was one of the earliest composers to have been involved in film music but it did think that as I listen to this peice that it would make a good film score. I’ve commented before that what was original and innovate music in the 1870s and 1880s became the cliches of film scores in the 1930s.