Bowen: Symphony no 2

Day 90

Bowen: Symphony no 2 op 31

BBC Philharmonic

Andrew Davis

York Bowen was one of those composers whose music you tended to find in piles of old music in dusty second hand shops. It seems to have been reasonably easy to get music printed in the pre-war period and so much of what was published has vanished into obscurity. York Bowen had undergone a signficant revival in the last 20 years and now there are recordings of much of his music and there is an active society dedicated to promoting his music. 

This symphony dates from 1909 - relatively early in his long composing career. At that time he was seen as one of the leading British composers - major figures performed his music and no less an authority than Saint Saëns commented that Bowen was the leading English composer of his day. But after the first war his star waned and his music fell out of the repertory. This symphony is a full blooded work which lasts about 45 minutes. The biggest influence on the music seems to be Tchaikovsky - indeed on a cold hearing you could easily imagine the work to be by a Russian composer. But perhaps the main issue with the work is its lack of stylistic coherence. Alongside the intense Russian music other parts of the symphony sound more like the sort of British light music which featured in Hyperion’s fabulous light music series. Nothing wrong with that of course - I love some of those pieces - but the contrast does jar. I get the sense that Bowen threw everything he could at the piece - the end in particular is rather overblown and Bowen seemed reluctant to actually reach the final chord!

So another interesting British symphony. Much to enjoy along the way but nothing here which suggests that Saint-Saëns’s view has been vindicated by 100 years of history.

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.

Alwyn: Symphony no 3

Day 88

Alwyn: Symphony no 3

I will have heard some of Alwyn’s film music before but as far as I know I have never heard any of his concert repertoire. He wrote five symphonies - this one was written in 1948 and given its premiere under the baton of Sir Thomas Beecham.

I thought that it was a very impressive piece. It had a symphonic logic and a real sense of progression. Like many British works of the time the spirit of Sibelius permeates the work, particularly in the first movement, but there is a distinctly Russian sound world to the piece, particularly in the 2nd and 3rd movements. Indeed heard blind I would have guessed Shostakovich as the composer. It has his sense of yearning in the slow movement and his energy in the last movement - side drum and all.  But it is never pastiche: this is a composer sure of his own voice.  My own reservation was the very end. After a beautiful slow and quiet coda Alwyn then briefly brings back the material of the start of the movement in an abrupt conclusion. Personally I think it would have been better to have ended the piece quietly - the very end did seem to be tacked on. 

So another successful exploration of British symphonic repertory. Lots more to go at over the next few days.

Gipps: Symphony no 2

Day 87

Gipps: Symphony no 2 op 30

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Rumon Gamba

My oboe playing friends speak highly of Ruth Gipps and her name crops up fairly frequently in record reviews and musical journalism these days so I thought it was time that I sampled some of her music, particularly as this fits in with my current theme of exploring British symphonies.

Gipps, who was a professional oboe player and a pianist of some repute. She wrote 5 symphonies - the second, which dates from 1945, is in a single movement. I enjoyed listening to it but I have to confess I didn’t find it very memorable. Indeed writing this up a few hours after hearing the work I confess that I struggled to remember anything much about the music. There were some lovely reflective movements in the slow section in the middle but other than that nothing has stuck.  Perhaps this was, unlike for most of the pieces in this project I didn’t have a score of the work, so perhaps my concentration in listening in the first place was not as strong as it has been with many of the other pieces I have listened to here.

I’ve no idea whether this was typical of Gipps' output or not - certainly some commentators seem to suggest that it is her concertos that show the best of her work. I’ll try to hear the oboe or horn concertos before long to see if they give me a more balanced view of her music.

Rubbra: Symphony no 7

Day 86

Rubbra: Symphony no 7 in C op 88

BBC National Orchestra of Wales

Richard Hickox

I have a (extremely) tenuous connection with Rubbra in that my Ph.D supervisor John Tyrrell had Rubbra as his Ph.D supervisor. It is a bit like those early 20th century pianists who advertised themselves as pupils of pupils of Chopin! But whereas John was an inspirational teacher and mentor who spent endless amounts of time with me and taught me the importance of exacting standards he told me that Rubbra gave him very little help or support and that John was more or less left to fend for himself. But I suppose, considering that he ended up as an internationally renowned scholar, the experience didn't do him any harm.  

I have a vague memory of hearing a bit of one of Rubbra's choral works at university but otherwise his output is entirely unfamiliar to me so I had no real expectation of what sort of music this symphony would contain. I have to say that I found the symphony compelling - particularly the first movement. It was a serious piece of symphonic logic which was never flashy but which always commanded attention. The spirit of Sibelius certainly could be felt and at times there were flashes of Shostakovich-like intensity. The middle movement was attractive but never superficial, though I did think that perhaps it was a couple of minutes too long.  The finale was particularly interesting. A long passacaglia, very serious and weighty in tone with some really impressive climaxes - then a fugue. I knew that the movement was described as a Passacaglia and Fugue and every time I turned a page in the score I was waiting for the fugue to start, but for ages it didn't - indeed at one point I though that I must have made a mistake and that there wasn't a fugue at all. But eventually it did come: it did seem to me that the proportions were not quite right and that the Passacaglia was too long and overshadowed the fugue - which didn't really have the space to develop.

But that apart I thought that this was a very well constructed symphony showing a serious mind at work and with a real grasp of symphonic logic. There is plenty more Rubbra to go at and I will certainly explore some of the other symphonies. I must get over my slight prejudice against him which I must have absorbed from John.

Bax: Symphony no 3

Day 85

Bax: Symphony no 3

BBC Philharmonic

Vernon Handley

After a period of concentration on Russian and French Opera I thought that I would change direction and spend a bit of time on 20th century British symphonies. Once you get past the obvious names of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Walton my knowledge of this repertoire is very thin so this project is an obvious way to catch up with an area of music I ought to know better than I do.

My experience of Bax is limited to a few piano piece and Tintagel, which I have played a couple of times. I've said before in this project that the opening of that piece is wonderful but I don't think that the composer sustains that level of invention through the score.

I have to say that I didn't get much pleasure from this symphony. I couldn't really see what Bax was tying to achieve. The structure was quite odd - a long first movement which had a slow section in the middle, followed by a slow movement. Then a jaunty finale which ended with an epilogue which seemed to me (I didn't time it) almost as long as the rest of the movement.  Also I didn't get any sense of stylistic consistency. Quite different styles were interlinked without, to me at any rate, any overall sense of unity. And to have a single anvil stroke at the climax of the first movement just seemed bizarre.

There were some beautiful passages in the slow movement and epilogue, which did remind you that this was the composer of Tintagel, but to me there were not enough of them to justify the symphony as a whole. So a disappointment, and I won't be returning to Bax for a while, though no doubt there are treasures to be found elsewhere in the symphonies - he has a high reputation among at least some commentators.

Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina

Day 84

Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina

Soloists

Kirov Opera

Valery Gergiev

I conclude my exploration of The Five with the figure who is generally considered to be the greatest of the mighty handful - Mussorgsky. I suppose that like most people I first came across him via Night on a Bare Mountain, though as we have come to realise that version of that work that we usually here owes as much to Rimsky as it does to Mussorgsky. It is symptomatic of the fairly chaotic state in which the composer left his works.

This opera is typical. The piano score is more or less finished but the end is missing. Almost none of the music is orchestrated. So various hands have been involved in making performance versions, including (inevitably) Rimsky, Stravinsky, Ravel and Shostakovich. 

This recording uses the Shostakovich orchestration but I was following it with a full score of the Rimsky version so it was fascinating to see the different approaches of the two later composers. Rimsky made several cuts and was fairly free in the way in which he revised the vocal lines and in some cases the harmonies. Shostakovich sets the vocal score more or less exactly as Mussorgsky left it. Their orchestration choices are fascinating. I did notice in many places Shostakovich gave material to the strings that Rimsky gave to the woodwind, and vice versa.  I wonder whether that was a deliberate choice by the younger man to create a different sound world.  Only once or twice did I feel that Shostakovich moved from Mussorgsky’s sound world into his own - there was a side drum addition at one point which could have come out of any of the Shostakovich symphonies.

What wonderful music this is.  It has all of the characteristics of Russian opera that you would expect, big set pieces, marvellous choral writing, folk tune, religious processions and chanting and real melodic distinction. The story is impossibly complex and in reality it is best thought of as a series of tableau rather than a coherent narrative. And how impressive the bass singers were on this recording - those massive sonorous voices which can fill a vast space with ease are so characteristic of Russian opera - for all their other merits western bases simply cannot compete when it comes to this repertory.

And what of the ending?  Mussorgsky didn’t complete the opera but did suggest that an ancient folk melody might be used. Shostakovich writes a very impressive ending based on material heard early in the opera which brings the piece to an epic conclusion. I also listened to the Stravinsky ending. This is much more faithful to what Mussorgsky’s intentions seem to have been (though there is no certainty in the matter) - the main tune in the chorus just fades away to nothing. Both endings in the very different way are highly effective. This opera will always be a problem piece but there is some hugely impressive music here - the contrast with the rather neat and polite Cui from yesterday couldn’t be more stark.