In Part Two of the Twentieth Century Symphony, we look at the rich 1930s and first half of the 1940s. There is again great variety. We now find symphonies from Mexico and Brazil, from Iceland and also from Japan.
1. Nikolay Myaskovsky, Symphony No 11 in B flat minor Op 34 (1931)
Written in the composer's most accessible style (more conservative then the preceding 10th symphony), this symphony is - as often with Myaskovsky - in three movements. Formal unity is achieved by a monothematic structure: the basic thematic material is introduced in the slow introduction to the first movement and then developed further in a dramatic manner in the Allegro agitato. The ensuing Andante unexpectedly closes with a sonorous woodwind fugato. The finale is a series of variations on several themes, one of which comes from the second movement. The work's premiere took place two years after completion, when Myaskovsky had made some revisions, especially in the finale. The symphony was dedicated to Maximilian Steinberg, son-in-law of Rimsky-Korsakov and an important composer in his own right. The symphony was premiered on 16 January 1933 in Moscow, conducted by Konstantin Saradzhev. With Shostakovitch, Weinberg and Prokofiev (after his return to the USSR), Myaskovsky was one of the greatest symphonists of the Soviet Union. Like Shostakovitch, he also wrote a long series of excellent string quartets. Although he won the Stalin Prize 5 times, he was also often criticized for his "individualism, decadence, pessimism, formalism and complexity." As professor of composition at Moscow Conservatory from 1921 until his death, Myaskovsky exercised an important influence on his many pupils, as the young Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Vissarion Shebalin, Rodion Shchedrin, and Boris Tchaikovsky, to name a few. Myaskovsky's music is sadly under appreciated.
[Recording listened to: Russian Federation Academic Symphony Orchestra conducted by Evgeny Svetlanov]
[Myaskovsky]
2. Charles Koechlin, The Seven Stars' Symphony Op. 132 [1933]
The eccentric French composer Charles Koechlin (1867 – 1950; his Alsace-originating name is pronounced as if spelled "Kéclin" [rhyming with French "né" and nasal "vin"]) has already been briefly introduced in my post on Viola Music. Prolific and eclectic, Koechlin was inspired by such diverse elements as the Orient, French folk songs and choral music by Bach. He developed an expressive language that was all his own and has been called the "missing link," musically, between Debussy, Satie and Poulenc. The "stars" from this symphony are "film stars," mostly from the age of silent film in Hollywood. And the symphony is decidedly no film music, this tribute to Hollywood stars and starlets is mysterious and impressionistic, the orchestra is only used sparingly. The individual movements are Koechlin's own view of Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings and Charlie Chaplin – and the roles they played. So we have a Arabian Night atmosphere for Fairbanks, the bustle of early Hollywood for Clara Bow and a remotely aloof world for Greta Garbo. Chaplin portrays both the pathos and clowning of the little tramp. Koechlin uses large and unusual combinations of instruments in rich complexity, to achieve astonishingly individual but highly evocative textures and colors. A symphony that is completely sui generis.
[Recording listened to: Deutsches Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by James Judd]
3. Carlos Chavez, Sinfonia de Antigona (1933)
Carlos Chavez (1899-1878) was the central figure in Mexican classical music. He was not only a composer, but also conductor, music theorist, educator and founder of the Mexican Symphonic Orchestra. Although in some works he was influenced by traditional Mexican music, he was a modernist who developed his own style. He wrote 6 symphonies. The First Symphony is - as the title says - based on the Greek tragedy of Antigone. In fact, the work originated as incidental music to accompany a production of Jean Cocteau's Modernist adaptation of Sophocles' famous tragedy, given by an experimental theater group in Mexico City. Chavez reworked and re-scored the music for large orchestra and the result is every bit as stark, modern, and intense as Cocteau's modern mise-en-scène. The symphony is scored for wind instruments (including bass clarinet, heckelphone and eight horns), two harps and percussion. The use of quartal and quintal harmonies underlines the austerity and severe archaism of the music. It is primitivist, abstract, and both Greek and Aztec at the same time.
[Recording listened to: Orquesta Filarmonica de la Ciudad de Mexico conducted by Enrique Batiz]
[Chavez]
4. Kurt Weill, Symphony No 2 (1933-34)
The second symphony by Kurt Weill (which he counted as his first one, as the first was never published) is one of the 20th century’s forgotten masterpieces. It was written during the final days of the Weimar Republic and commissioned by / dedicated to the Princess Edmond the Polignac (heir to the Singer sewing-machine fortune). Composition was interrupted by Weill's flight from Berlin to Paris in March 1933, and work on the ballet The Seven Deadly Sins with Bertold Brecht. The symphony was completed at Louveciennes, near Paris, in February 1934 and premiered by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bruno Walter. This lean and urgent symphony recalls the popular Weill, but raised to the absolute abstraction of purely symphonic music. There is a strong rhythmic propulsion and the textures are bright and clean. The first movement is a compressed sonata form with a strong motoric drive based on germinal motives stated in the nervous introduction. The slow movement is a funeral march which bears most of the emotional weight of the symphony and the final rondo is a whirlwind tarantella which grows in fierceness as it tries to overwhelm the steps of militaristic march episodes. It is sad that this Modernist musical icon, meticulously crafted and innovative, has been so completely forgotten.
[Recording listened to: Gewandhausorchester Leipzig conducted by Edo de Waart; on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DFCY3kFOxg]
5. Kosaku Yamada, Nagauta Symphony "Tsurukame" (1934)
Yamada Kosaku (1886-1965) studied under German teachers at the Tokyo Music School, the center of Western music in Japan in the early 20th c. He was recommended for study in Berlin, where he went from 1910-13. He studied with Max Bruch and Karl Leopold Wolf. While in Germany, his models changed from Schubert and Schumann to Richard Strauss, Debussy and Scriabin. In the music he wrote himself, German late Romanticism, French Impressionism, Scriabin's mysticism and Japanese traditional elements were combined. Although in Germany Yamada had written symphonies and symphonic poems, there were no orchestras in Japan yet that could tackle these, so in the 1920s he mainly wrote songs (some of which became very famous, such as Akatonbo, Kono michi and Karatachi no hana). He also laid the foundations for what is today the NHK Symphony Orchestra. Yamada greatly promoted music education in Japan and also conducted abroad, for example in the New York Carnegie Hall with a concert of his own works. Yamada Kosaku showed audiences in Europe and America that Japanese could compose Western orchestral music. In his Nagauta Symphony he did something experimental, rather different from his other works: he took a piece of traditional Japanese music and without changing anything in the original, added music for symphony orchestra with double winds plus harp, to compete contrapuntally, almost like a concerto. But the orchestra aims to harmonize, not to confront. The Japanese piece he used is a so-called "nagauta," a ballad-like "long song," a genre developed in the 17th c. and used for example to accompany the Kabuki. The standard instrumentation consists of singers, shamisen, fue and percussion. The piece in question is called "Tsurukame" which means "Crane and Tortoise," and as both were long-lived, happiness-bringing animals, this is a very auspicious piece of music. Tsurukame goes back to a No play and was mainly performed at New Year celebrations. The traditional Japanese music may at the first hearing sound strange to unaccustomed ears, but do give it a try. Yamada started a tradition with this piece of music that would lead to such important works as November Steps for biwa and shakuhachi by Takemitsu Toru in the 1960s.
[Recording listened to: Takuo Yuasa with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Touon Tetsuo Miyata, nagauta and Touon Toru Ajimi, shamisen]
6. Paul Hindemith, Symphony "Mathis der Maler" (1934-35)
Hindemith first attracted attention as an "enfant terrible" with iconoclastic and anti-Romantic pieces, such as his "Gebrauchsmusik," but during the 1930s he matured into an artist of great stature. In 1935 he wrote his opera Mathis der Maler about the creative predicament of the 16th c. painter Matthias (or Mathis) Grünewald (c. 1475-1528) who is known for the large altarpiece he created in Isenheim (characterized by graphic depictions of physical suffering - Grünewald became an important figure for Expressionist artists in Germany). The opera is a powerful profession of European cultural values and was refused performance in Nazi-Germany. Hindemith based his Mathis der Maler symphony on the materials of the opera, and this work rapidly became an international success. The symphony is in three movements which represent three of Grünewald's paintings. The glowing, joyous first movement "Concert of Angels" corresponds to the overture of the opera and is built around a German folk melody "Es sungen drei Engel." The chorale tune is stated softly by the trombones, then taken
up by the other instruments in what sounds like a gigantic Bach
organ chorale transcribed for orchestra. The short elegiac second movement "Entombment" is based on the orchestral interlude in the final act of the opera. It relates to the Altarpiece’s depiction of the entombment of Christ. The multi-sectional finale, "The Temptation of St Anthony," depicts the battle for Mathis’ soul by raging demons and grows increasingly fierce, until ending in the peacefulness of the old chorale tune Lauda
Sion. The symphony ends in a blazing
affirmation of faith in the power of art, one of Hindemith's most sensational achievements. This symphony is Hindemith's absolute masterpiece.
[Recording listened to: Paul Kletzki with L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande]
This symphony on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znXWfmfPh8E
7. Arnold Bax, Symphony No 6 (1935)
The first movement opens with a bleak introductory section, before the Allegro con fuoco of the movement proper is launched. The introduction is characterized by a heavy-footed basso ostinato which will play a large role in this whole movement. Bax kept to the sonata form for the dramatic first movement, which sometimes has the hint of an Irish dance to it. In the central section a more lyrical second subject alternates with fierce, stormy music. The second movement is calm and subdued, featuring three themes before ending in a march in six-eighths. There is an
almost jazzy trumpet solo in the middle. The third and last movement is the most innovative. It starts with an introduction, an extended, haunting clarinet solo which forms a basis for much of the material throughout the movement, after which the scherzo follows, which with its bassoon line harks back to the clarinet line from the introduction. There is a short intermission with a trio, which returns to the scherzo with a quote from Sibelius' Tapiola. A manic jig-like dance leads to an ecstatic climax. The tranquil epilogue features a horn playing the clarinet line from the introduction. Bax got his inspiration as usual from nature, from his stay in Morar in the Scottish highlands. In particular, the ideas for the scherzo came to him on the islands of Rum and Eigg. This dark and intense symphony is generally regarded as Bax' masterpiece. Bax dedicated his Sixth Symphony to conductor Sir Adrian Boult.
[Recording listened to: Bryden Thomson with the London Philharmonic Orchestra]
8. William Walton, Symphony No 1 (1935)
One of the great 20th
c. symphonies (although it also contains some bombastic moments). The
opening Allegro assai, starting (1) with a drum roll on B flat, (2) a harmonic pyramid played by the horns, (3) a nervous rhythmic crescendo in the strings, and (4) a long-note melody in the
oboe, is among the most exciting starts to a
symphony ever written. These 30 seconds present the germ of the whole first movement, which is a brilliant development of these motives, harmonically anchored to extended pedal notes in the bass. The movement is filled with high tension and forms a a passionate, frenzied drama,
in which there is little lyrical respite. The Scherzo "with malice" continues the same sentiments with the addition of biting cynicism. The slow movement grows from the long melancholy melody played by the solo flute in the opening measures. It took Walton several years of writer's block to find the right tone for the rousing finale which reminds one of the bombast of Walton's coronation marches and which finishes with a majestic processional. It is sometimes said that Walton referred to the politically threatening situation of the 1930s in this symphony, but that seems incorrect to me (it was written much too early in time for that) - and Walton lived a carefree life cavorting with several aristocratic girlfriends in Switzerland when he wrote the symphony. It is a great piece of drama, but I don't see any personal or political grievances in the work. The symphony was written at the request of Sir Hamilton Harty, conductor of the Hallé Orchestra.
[Recording listened to: Royal Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Andre Previn]
9. Samuel Barber, Symphony No 1 (1936)
This work synthesizes the four traditional movements of the classical symphony into a single movement. It is based on three themes of the initial Allegro non troppo, which retain throughout the work their fundamental character. The Allegro opens with the usual exposition of a main theme, a more lyrical second theme, and a closing theme. After a brief development, instead of the usual recapitulation, the first theme forms the basis for the Scherzo section (Vivace). This is followed by an Andante tranquillo based on the second theme (oboe over muted strings). The finale is a short passacaglia based on the first theme over which the closing theme is woven. Barber commenced work on the symphony in August 1935 and completed it at the Anabel Taylor Foundation in Roquebrune in the French Alps. It was dedicated to Gian Carlo Menotti.
[Recording listened to: Neeme Jarvi with Detroit Symphony Orchestra]
This symphony on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEqClmMxsTQ
10. Ernest John Moeran, Symphony (1937)
Another symphony requested by Sir Hamilton Harty, conductor of the Hallé Orchestra. The four part symphony is Moeran's only one and took the composer ten years to finish. The first movement was written among the mountains and seaboard of country Kerry and contains folk song elements (Moeran was a diligent collector of Irish and East Anglian folk tunes), which however have been completely assimilated into the fabric of the music. The second movement was conceived in England, around the sand dunes and marshes of East Norfolk, and we hear the storm wind blowing over the desolate and windswept landscape. In this movement the influence of Sibelius is quite strong. This is followed by an elfin scherzo, like light flickering on rippling waters. In the finale Moeran uses the structure of a fantasia, and the main idea has the infectious energy of a jig - although at other moments the music is again shot through with a Celtic twilight sadness. In this beautiful symphony the dual strands of Moeran's Anglo-Irish personality stand side by side.
[Recording listened to: Ulster Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley]
11. Darius Milhaud, Symphony no 1 [1939]
The first of Milhaud's twelve symphonies was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, just at the time that the German occupation of France forced the composer to flee to America. Along with Stravinsky, Milhaud was one of the major practitioners of the neoclassical style in music in the 1920s and 1930s. He eschewed large ensembles, overwrought sentimentality, and “German” heaviness, writing a music that is generally busy, often playful and nonchalant, and always colorful. The First Symphony frequently employs chamber ensembles within the orchestra. The opening movement is most concentrated: the winds carry the theme, accompanied by pizzicato strings. Much of the writing is in the upper and lower registers, often simultaneously, giving the sound at times a distinct quality. It is in fact music which is difficult to play and which also asks for attention from the listener - there are no popular jazzy or Latin tunes in the style of Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Milhaud wrote serious symphonies that engage the listener at many different levels.
[Recording listened to: Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Michel Plasson]
12. William Schuman, Symphony No 3 (1941)
Originally a writer of pop songs, William Schuman (1910-1992) came late to classical music, but rose to such central positions as president of the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center. He wrote ten symphonies, an important oeuvre. Schuman had a great feeling for orchestral sound. The Third Symphony is in two parts which each have been divided into two movements: Passacaglia and Fugue, and Chorale and Toccata. The passacaglia theme is at first treated as a canon and develops into a beautiful melody. The fugue is in fact a fugue with variations. The chorale represents the heart of the composition and varies between a quietly sonorous polyphony for strings and a series of accompanied wind solos. The toccata is virtuoso and energetic and follows without a break.
[Performance listened to: New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein]
13. Arthur Honegger, Symphony No 2 for String Orchestra and Trumpet (1941-42)
Honegger's second symphony for strings and trumpet was commissioned in 1937 by Paul Sacher to mark the tenth anniversary of the Basler Kammerorchester. Progress was slow, however, in part because of the outbreak of WWII. The wartime environment has strongly influenced the music: this is unhappy and troubled (even at times desperate) music, written by someone unable to come to terms with the madness that surrounds him. Only when the trumpet enters near the end of the symphony to reinforce the chorale tune ("like pulling out an organ stop," as Honegger remarked), do we feel a glimmer of hope.
[Recording listened to: I Musici de Montreal conducted by Yuli Turovsky]
This symphony on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfssYoRkY58
14. Jón Leifs, Saga Symphony [1942]
Jón Leifs (1899-1968) was the most northern among north-European composers: the first and foremost composer (as well as conductor, pianist and writer on music) of scarcely populated Iceland. Born as the son of a farmer, he studied music at the Leipzig Conservatory and later with Busoni; this was at a time there were no professional musicians yet in Iceland - when Leifs visited his home country in 1926 with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, he gave the first ever symphonic concert on the island. Leifs was as rugged as the wild nature of Iceland, a man who from the start wanted to go his own way in music without influence from others. He was a monumental individualist, striving to write music that would be "hard, cool, difficult and heroic (in the style of the Icelandic sagas)." He constantly tried to make his style more radical, and less dependent on ornamentation. In the 1920s Leifs collected folk songs on Iceland and what he learned from them allowed him to base his music on old-Icelandic characteristics (in the same way Bartok based his style on the Hungarian folk songs he had collected), such as the Tvísöngur (Zwiegesänge) and Rímur (Reimweisen). The symphony typically has an uncompromising, primitivistic sound-world, employing tuned anvils, specially made wooden drums (without skins, hammered by huge mallets), iron and wooden shields, rocks of differing sizes approximating different pitches, and replica Bronze Age horns (or lurs). It must be conceded that there is little conventional development or counterpoint, but however brusque or awkward it all seems (echoes of critical misperceptions of Havergal Brian or Ives here), Saga Symphony is extremely effective, as the scherzo, “Bjorn behind Kari”, or the nightmarish intermezzo, “Glamr og Grettir”, manifestly confirm.
[Recording listened to: Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Osmo Vanska]
[Leifs]
15. Leonard Bernstein, Symphony No. 1: Jeremiah (1942)
This compact symphony is in three movements: "Prophecy," "Profanation," and "Lamentation." The third movement uses texts from the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew Bible, sung by a mezzo-soprano. When he wrote the symphony, Bernstein was only 24 years old, and he brought great energy to the work in which elements from his later compositions can already be heard. Although the symphony contains elements of Jewish cantillation motives, it does not to any great extent use actual Hebrew materials. The first movement (Prophecy) aims to parallel in feeling the intensity of the prophet's plea with the people. The Scherzo (Profanation) is meant to give a general sense of the destruction and chaos brought on by the pagan corruption within the priesthood and the people. The third movement (Lamentation) describes the cry of Jeremiah as he mourns the ruined Jerusalem.
[Recording listened to: Israel Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein (Christa Ludwig, soprano)]
This symphony on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGKCoZ-4DFM
16. Vaughan Williams, Symphony No 5 [1938-43]
A shift away from the dissonance of Vaughan Williams's strident Fourth Symphony and a return to the gentler style of the earlier Pastoral Symphony. Many of the themes in the Fifth Symphony stem from the opera The Pilgrim's Progress, which was then being written (it in fact took the composer 30 years and as he despaired that it might never be completed he incorporated some of its ideas and themes into the Fifth Symphony). The four movements are called Preludio, Scherzo, Romanza and Passacaglia. The symphony is suffused with a luminous quality and contains benedictory and consoling music. The Symphony was first played at a Promenade concert on 24 June 1943, with the composer conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The symphony has been frequently performed and recorded.
[Recording listened to: The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson; on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsQGFlcqUmA (hr-Sinfonieorchester under Sir Andrew Davis)]
17. Paul Creston, Symphony No. 2, Op. 35 (1944)
A brilliantly constructed symphony that deserves to be ranked among the greatest American symphonies. First performed February 15 1945 by the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski. It is in two grand movements: I Introduction and Song; II Interlude and Dance. It was conceived as an apotheosis of the two foundations of all music, song and dance. The entire symphony is constructed out of material presented in the opening bars of the first movement. The inward-orientated introduction leads to a soaring song, but there are also quiet moments in the slow first movement. In contrast, the Interlude and Dance begins with a surging upward momentum. It develops into a dynamic dance with jazzy and South-American rhythms. The symphony is brought to a close with a
passionate restatement of the lyrical Song theme.
[Recording listened to: National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine conducted by Theodore Kuchar]
18. Heitor Villa-Lobos, Symphony No. 6 (1944)
This symphony has the subtitle "On the Outline of the Mountains of Brazil". Villa-Lobos composed his Sixth Symphony in Rio de Janeiro in 1944. It was first performed in that same city on 29 April 1950 by the Orquestra do Theatro Municipal, conducted by the composer. The main theme of the symphony was devised by projecting the outline of mountains at Belo Horizonte, Brazil, onto graph paper and transcribing the result as a melody (!). So it is not a programmatic representation of Brazilian topography. The first movement is in a slightly unconventional sonata-allegro form which, according to the composer's usual methods, omits the second theme from the recapitulation. It opens with an uplifting, evocative and sweeping motif that instantly sets the work’s atmosphere and character. The slow movement creates an atmosphere of mystery in its upward sweep, but the high point of the symphony is the concise third movement, Allegretto. The fourth movement, without making any direct reference to nationalistic traits, bears the composer’s unmistakable stamp in the expansive theme played on divided violas and cellos, in the free fugato sections and in the rhythmic vitality of the horn theme before the reprise. This is the most often played of Villa-Lobos' symphonies, demonstrating his skill at creating a seamless blend of traditional South American culture and European society.
[Recording listened to: SWR Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart conducted by Carl St. Clair]
[Villa-Lobos]
19. Igor Stravinsky, Symphony in Three Movements (1942-45)
Stravinsky wrote this work on commission by the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York; it was premiered by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under the composer on January 24, 1946. The symphony was Stravinsky's first major composition after emigrating to the United States. Material is drawn from projects that Stravinsky had abandoned. The piano's presence in the first movement stems from a work with a concertante piano part - this remained prominent, but not obtrusively so, instead reinforcing the rhythmic and percussive quality in Stravinsky's orchestration. The second movement uses material written by Stravinsky for an aborted film project, the incidental music for the film version of Franz Werfel's novel The Song of Bernadette. Stravinsky was informally approached for the writing of the film score and in 1943 he wrote music for Bernadette's vision of the Virgin Mary. This music, with a prominent part for the harp (while the piano remains silent), became the central Andante of the symphony. The third and last movement was added by Stravinsky in 1945 (starting with a linking Interlude). In contrast to Stravinsky's earlier Symphony in C, the Symphony in Three Movements is much more turbulent and chromatic. [Recording listened to: L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande conducted by Charles Dutoit; This symphony on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE0RUmG7oOE (Victoria Symphony -Tania Miller, conductor)]
20. Bohuslav Martinu, Fourth Symphony (1945)
Bohuslav Martinů wrote his
fourth symphony in the American countryside, near Cape Cod, in the
spring of 1945. In that spring, WWII was ending, and feelings of peace
were in the air. Martinu opens the work in his favorite key of B flat
major and aligns himself more strongly than usual with the Bohemian
tradition of Smetana and Dvorak. The first movement shows the composer's
capacity for thematic development and the music is animated by an inner light and confidence. The rhythmically lively scherzo provides many echoes from Martinu's homeland. The Largo in contrast is dark-hued, with a serious mood and complicated chromatism. Hope and joy return in the Finale and the symphony ends with a shining ode to joy in C major. The
symphony was first played by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugeny
Ormandy on the last day of November 1945.
[Recording listened to: Bamberger Symphoniker conducted by Neeme Jarvi; other performance at Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laI5pnq5X7g (hr-Sinfonieorchester / Andrés Orozco-Estrada)]
Best Symphonies from the Twentieth Century, Part One
Best Symphonies from the Twentieth Century, Part Two
Best Symphonies from the Twentieth Century, Part Three