Tag: Music

At last, the kinda-sorta weekly feature returns!

I’ve been listening to this symphony a lot of late. I find it a very compelling work, with a wealth of Romantic melody, vigorous orchestration, and quite a bit of pleasing energy. It’s also a mainly forgotten work, by composer John Knowles Paine. A big focus in this series has been to listen to a good many works of music that don’t deserve the obscurity into which they have faded, and Paine’s Symphony No. 2 certainly is that. Subtitled “In Spring”, the symphony is in four titled movements:

I. Adagio sostenuto: “Departure of Winter”; Allegro ma non troppo: “Awakening of Nature”
II. Scherzo Allegro: “May-Night Fantasy”
III. Adagio: “A Romance of Springtime”
IV. Allegro giojoso: “The Glory of Nature”

This is one of the most genial works I have ever heard, which is one reason I keep returning to it. There is some occasional brooding to the music, but the brooding invariably gives way to song and optimism. Perhaps that’s in keeping with the symphony’s vernal inspiration, and I for one find it hard to hear the last movement singing its heart out and not feel something of that optimism myself.

What a wonderful symphony this is!

Share This Post

I’m not ready yet to talk about Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (when you hear it, if you haven’t, you’ll understand why), so meantime let’s turn back the clock and hear a work at the opposite end of the symphonic pool. It’s the Symphony No. 104 by Franz Joseph Haydn.

Haydn isn’t heard much these days. He has long been nicknamed “Papa” Haydn, and he does seem to be viewed as a lesser-talented contemporary of Mozart, someone who is primarily famous for being one of the better placeholders between Bach’s death and Beethoven’s rise. This is, of course, totally unfair. Haydn is a composer of unappreciated depth, which I think shines forth in this, his last symphony.

During the Classical era the symphony settled into pretty much the form in which it would exist for most of the coming hundred years, the efforts of composers like Berlioz aside: four movement works, sonata-allegro form in the first, and so on. Haydn was deeply prolific, as just his production of over a hundred symphonies attests. But the work itself is the thing, and it glows throughout with classical restraint and an almost folkish feel at times. Even some of Haydn’s joking manner comes through, as the symphony opens with a minor key introduction before settling in to a cheerful major-key allegro.

It’s particularly interesting, when I’ve been listening to so much Mahler, to go back and revisit the earlier days of the form that Mahler would stretch farther than nearly anyone else. Here is Haydn’s 104th Symphony.

Share This Post

I seem to recall once owning a set of Franz Berwald’s symphonies. They made no impression on me whatsoever in the occasions I tried listening to them, and I’m not even sure if I still own the CDs. I’m not even sure what led me to listen to him again now, in 2017, but I did, and I’m glad I did so.

Berwald is a virtually canonical example of an artist whose work was obscure in his lifetime to the point of being almost completely ignored. Berwald, a Swede who lived from 1796 to 1868 — a decently long life in that time — couldn’t even earn a living as a musician, instead making his way as a surgeon and then as a factory manager. Of his four symphonies, only the first was played during his lifetime. He didn’t toil in complete obscurity; he had a few champions here and there, but virtually none in his own homeland.

His four symphonies certainly don’t deserve their obscurity, and one wonders just why they were so roundly disregarded during his lifetime. They are not massive works, nor do they place undue demands on the performers; their harmonic language is interesting but would surely not have been unlistenable in a musical climate that was trending toward Tristan. The world of art is a capricious one, and it is hard to escape the notion that what separates those who achieve recognition and those who do not is some celestial roll of the dice. (Enduring legacy? That’s another matter entirely.)

I present two of Berwald’s symphonies here: the Third in C major, titled “Sinfonie singulaire”, and the Fourth in E-flat major, called “Sinfonie naive”. Both symphonies abound with life and rustic nature, and it’s even tempting to hear — since Berwald was Swedish, after all — tantalizing hints of what would come decades later when Sibelius or Nielsen.

Here are the Third and Fourth symphonies of Franz Berwald.

Next week…I’m not sure. I want to do some more homework before I start in on Mahler.

Share This Post

Alexander Glazunov’s seventh symphony is named the “Pastoral”, and as such it evokes inevitable comparison with Beethoven’s own Symphony No. 6. Glazunov’s is clearly not the equal of Beethoven’s, but how could it be? This is not to say that Glazunov’s work isn’t worth hearing, because it most certainly is. It is pastoral music heard through the prism of Russian Romanticism as opposed to Viennese Classicism. Lyrical, folk-song melodies abound, and the symphony often has that wonderful Russian feel of “sustained build”. There always seems to be a spot in the best Russian symphonies when you can feel the energies gathering for an inevitable release. Listen in particular for some really thrilling writing for the timpani and the chant-like opening of the second movement, which sounds almost like a chorus of monks as they gather for prayer.

Here is Alexander Glazunov’s Symphony No. 7 in F Major.

Next week: a small step backward, chronologically, to look at a Swedish composer with whom most are probably unfamiliar. (Including me!) And soon…Mahler.

Share This Post

OK, we really fell off the wagon here, didn’t we? So let’s get back into it with a two-week look at a couple of Alexander Glazunov’s eight symphonies.

I must confess a great lack of familiarity with Glazunov’s work. He seems to be one of those composers who lingers at the edges of the standard repertoire. For whatever reason, he hasn’t broken through into the first tier of composers, but neither has he lapsed into obscurity, either. From what little I’ve heard, his work tends to be right up my alley, with its scope and its lyricism. He seems to be somewhere between Tchaikovsky’s songs of sorrow and Borodin’s love of epic grandeur. Glazunov bridged the end of Russian Romanticism and the beginnings of Russian Modernism, and thus he seems to be roughly analogous to Sergei Rachmaninov.

This is Glazunov’s Fifth Symphony. I’ve played it several times over the last few weeks, and I find myself responding more and more to it. It has all the heartfelt singing and Russian brooding that you would expect and wish for from a Russian symphony written in the post-Tchaikovsky era, as well as an almost frothy confection in the scherzo movement that sounds almost like a children’s dance.

Here is Glazunov’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major.

Next week: Glazunov’s 7th.

Share This Post