Wilhelm Stenhammar: Symphony No. 2; Musik till
August Strindbergs “Ett drömspel.” Antwerp Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christian
Lindberg. BIS. $19.99 (SACD).
Holst: Orchestral Works, Volume 4—A Winter Idyll; Symphony
“The Cotswolds”; Invocation (“A Song of the Evening”); A Moorside Suite; Indra;
Scherzo.
BBC Philharmonic conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Chandos. $18.99 (SACD).
Rachmaninoff: Symphony No. 3; Symphonic Dances. Philharmonia Orchestra
conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. Signum Classics. $17.99.
The symphony was reconsidered and redefined
in multiple ways in the late 19th century and through the 20th,
but no matter how thought of, it continued to exert tremendous fascination on
composers, who often considered it a pinnacle of accomplishment even if they
were not particularly devoted to symphonic form as a major part of their work.
As a result, some very interesting symphonies were produced in the late 1800s
and throughout the 1900s by composers who are not usually associated with the
form. Sweden’s Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927), for example, created two
completed symphonies but completely disavowed the first; he also started a
third symphony, but it exists only as a few sketches. Therefore, his Symphony
No. 2 is his only surviving score that truly reflects his compositional
maturity and structural ideas, which retain some of the German heritage evident
in his Symphony No. 1 but in No. 2 have moved much farther into the orbit of
Nordic composers, especially Sibelius and Nielsen. An excellent new performance
of Stenhammar’s Second by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra (the name adopted in
2017 by what was previously the Royal Flemish Philharmonic), conducted by
Christian Lindberg, shows how skillfully Stenhammar used and developed his
version of symphonic form even though most of his music is of other types
(piano, chamber and vocal). Dating to 1911-15, Stenhammar’s Second offers an
unusual combination of folklike and very learned elements, all treated in Stenhammar’s
highly personal style. It progresses from a first movement that takes a folk
tune and handles it modally to a finale – the symphony’s longest movement – in
the form of an elaborate double fugue. In between these movements are a solemn
but restrained slow movement and a rather gentle Scherzo; the result is a
symphony whose component parts have little in common, but are united through
Stenhammar’s treatment of the material and his skillful handling of keys and
modal structure. The work is unemotional, indeed rather cool, and a trifle
off-putting on initial hearing, but it repays repeated listening that evokes
respect for its clarity and the care of its construction. It is paired on a new
BIS SACD with a 1970 arrangement by composer Hilding Rosenberg of some of
Stenhammar’s music for August Strindberg’s A
Dream Play. Rosenberg turns the stage music into an 11-and-a-half-minute
tone poem that is rather episodic – it incorporates brief references to scenes
from the play – but that comes to a satisfying and well-orchestrated
conclusion. The work juxtaposes well with the grander and more abstract Symphony
No. 2.
Gustav Holst’s dates are close to those of
Stenhammar – Holst lived from 1874 to 1934 – and Holst too is known for works
other than symphonies. Indeed, he is known primarily for a single work, The Planets. But Holst’s musical
interests were quite wide and in many ways quite unusual, ranging from the
trombone (which he played in an orchestra conducted by Richard Strauss) to
English folksongs (he and Ralph Vaughan Williams were friends) to Sanskrit
literature. Yet Holst, like Stenhammar, dipped his talent into the symphonic
realm – in both composers’ cases, more or less three times. For Holst, that
meant the creation of A Choral Symphony
(1923-24) plus work on a symphony during the last two years of his life – plus
the composition of a single orchestral symphony, in F, known as “The Cotswolds”
and dating to 1899-1900. Modest in scale (at about 23 minutes, it is half the
length of Stenhammar’s Second), Holst’s symphony is primarily distinguished by
its second, longest movement, “Elegy in memoriam William Morris,” which is
beautiful and heartfelt. The symphony’s Scherzo also has a measure of what
would come to be Holst’s mature sound – which is particularly interesting
because the only finished movement of the symphony on which Holst worked near
the end of his life was its Scherzo. That movement – whose changes of emotion
and impact are rather abrupt and surprising – is heard on the same new Chandos
SACD that features “The Cotswolds.” The disc is the fourth in a series (originally
featuring the late Richard Hickox) in which the BBC Philharmonic under Sir
Andrew Davis plays Holst’s music idiomatically and with considerable affection
as well as understanding. The recording features one work even earlier than
“The Cotswolds,” namely A Winter Idyll,
which dates to 1897 and is a charming concert overture, if one without much
individuality. Also on the disc are Invocation
for cello and orchestra (1911), a genuinely lovely work with a highly affecting
cello part (played here by Guy Johnston); Holst’s only symphonic poem, Indra (1903), whose striking opening
brass fanfares are its most notable element, although there are some other
felicities of orchestration as well; and A
Moorside Suite (1928), originally written for brass band and intended for
school performance – except that it proved too difficult for that purpose. The
version heard on this disc is Holst’s 1932 string arrangement, which has a high
level of warmth and beauty in the central Nocturne
but loses some of the punch and brightness of the outer movements. Holst was
scarcely a symphonist, but this recording does a fine job of showcasing his
occasional symphonic interests and placing them in the context of some of his
other compositional forms.
Rachmaninoff is known for his symphonies, although calling him a “symphonist”
would still be stretching things, given the extent to which his small
compositional output includes piano music (solo and the four concertos) and
vocal works (including liturgical ones). However, Rachmaninoff’s final opus
numbers are in fact symphonic: Symphony No. 3, Op. 44 (1936), and the Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 (1940). Both
these works receive first-rate readings on a new Signum Classics release that
completes Vladimir Ashkenazy’s survey of the Rachmaninoff symphonies with the
Philharmonia Orchestra. Like the two earlier recordings, this one is taken from
live performances, and as with the earlier releases, Ashkenazy and the
orchestra seem to be energized by the presence of an audience. Rachmaninoff’s
Third Symphony is large-scale despite being in only three movements, but it
lacks the sumptuousness of the earlier two and has few of the very extended
melodies with which Rachmaninoff’s other music abounds. Calling it austere
would be an overstatement, but by the standards of this composer, the Third is
somewhat held back emotionally. Ashkenazy approaches the symphony with close
attention to detail, being especially effective in bringing forth some of the
attractive instrumental touches, such as the horn-and-harp opening of the
second movement. This is a well-controlled performance that lets the music flow
naturally and does not attempt to wring more emotion from the music than
Rachmaninoff included in it. There is careful control in the Symphonic Dances as well, and this large
and often rather strange work benefits from it. The three dances, broadly
speaking, connect both with times of day and with times of human life – that is
their connective tissue – and Ashkenazy seems well aware of this. The first
dance, representing midday, includes the unusual touches of an alto saxophone
and a quotation from Rachmaninoff’s ill-fated Symphony No. 1. The second,
representing twilight, is a distinctly crepuscular waltz with very little
resemblance to anything from the Strauss family: here Ashkenazy lets the woodwind
solos paint a picture of coming night. And night – specifically midnight – does
come in the third dance, whose reference to death is made clear by
Rachmaninoff’s inclusion here (as in a number of his other works) of the Dies irae. Yet the Symphonic Dances end in hopeful, even upbeat mood, and the
performance here suggests that Ashkenazy’s own Russian heritage stands him in
particularly good stead in understanding and interpreting the music of
Rachmaninoff, both in symphonies and in the other large-scale works that so
clearly resonated with this composer’s feelings and emotions.
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