Here are my favorite works for string orchestra, from the '70s of the 19th century to the '70s of the 20th century, in two parts. It seems that during those roughly 100 years there were periods in which music for string orchestra was very popular, and periods in which that was not so much the case. Popular periods were the last 25 years of the 19th century, and the 1930s to 1950s. What makes composers write works for strings only? I do hope also in the future great string works will be composed!
I love music for string orchestra because of the serenity - this is monochrome music, without wind or percussion - like a Chinese or Japanese painting in Indian ink. And just like the string quartet, it focuses the composer on essentials. In some cases, string quartets are even adapted for string orchestra. But there is also a difference with the highly serious string quartet: many works for string ensemble are serenades and suites, so music in a lighter vein. But thanks to the sonorous string sound, these are all elegant and even noble works, without any vulgarity.
In Part One string music by: Dvorak, Janacek, Herbert, Grieg, Nielsen, Tchaikovsky, Suk, Parry, Karlowicz, Reinecke, Schonberg, Elgar, Bridge, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Warlock, Stravinsky, Respighi, Ireland, Andriessen, Britten.
1. Antonin Dvorak, Serenade for Strings in E major Op 22 (1875, Czech)
The Serenade for Strings is one of the composer's most popular orchestral works. It was composed in just two weeks in May 1875. Dvorak's fertility of invention and instinctive feeling for melody and rhythm are fully apparent in this early serenade. It consists of five movements and, with the exception of the finale, which is in modified sonata form, each
movement follows an ABA form. The music is a combination of cantabile style (first movement), a slow waltz
(second movement), humorous high spirits (third movement), lyrical
beauty (fourth movement) and exuberance (fifth movement).
The first movement starts off the Serenade in the key of E major. The second violins and cellos introduce the lyrical main theme over an eighth note pulse in the violas. The theme is traded back and forth, and the second violins reprise it under a soaring passage in the firsts. The second movement, a waltz, opens with a lilting dance melody in C-sharp minor. The third movement is a lively, hyperactive Scherzo in F major. The slow movement (a Larghetto in A major) of the Serenade is tranquil and wistful. Its flowing melodies and tender phrases form a buffer between the vigorous third and fifth movements. The fifth movement is a lively, offbeat finale, conveying the spirit of a Bohemian village dance. It starts in F-sharp minor and modulates to E major. The gaiety (but not the wit) is temporarily suspended for a backward glance at the previous movement an towards the end a quotation from the first movement completes the circle.
Listen to: Netherlands Chamber Orchestra / Gordan Nikolić (violin / concertmaster)
2. Leos Janacek, Idyll Suite for String Orchestra (1878, Czech)
The young Janacek started his career with two orchestral works for strings, a Suite (without specific title) and a Suite called "Idyll." These two early works reflect the influence of his two countrymen Smetana and Dvorak, and there are also traces of folk music. But these works also anticipate the Janacek to come: constantly changing tonality, short angular phrases and cross-rhythms.
The Idyll Suite counts seven long movements which apart from the fourth and the seventh are set in ABA form. Reflecting the temperament of the composer, fiery emotion bursts through
continually, finally dominating the idyllic, serenade mood which is
promised by the title. The B minor first movement begins like a serenade, but bottled up emotion soon breaks through. The following D Major Allegro has a lightly hovering, dance-like main theme. The G Major Moderato opens out into Bohemian polka strains which are intensified above the pizzicato of the basses and violas. The fourth movement, a B minor Allegro, is in free sonata form. The fifth movement is a lovely Dumka, a beautiful Adagio for muted strings, which also is a precursor of the magnificent slow movement of the Sinfonietta - it achieved fame by appearing on the sound
track of Philip Kaufman’s film The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The G Major Scherzo is a joyous dance movement. Baroque reminiscences can be found in the rondo-like final movement which again takes off in the key of B minor. A final grand climax brings the symphonically conceived movement dramatically to an end.
However, just two years later Janacek would write to his wife that both Suite and Idyll were “outdated,” and it would be another ten years before he attempted another orchestral work. Posterity has looked more kindly on the Idyll Suite than its composer. Rediscovered in 1938, the work was published in 1951, and since then it has been recorded more than twenty times. Although at a remove from Janáček’s mature style, it has many interesting features and good melodies that contribute to its ongoing popularity.
Listen to: A Far Cry
3. Victor Herbert, Serenade for String Orchestra Op 12 (1884, U.S.)
Victor Herbert (1859-1924) was born on the English Isle of Guernsey of an English mother (of his father, only the name is known - he was probably German). Herbert grew up in Germany and studied cello and composition at the Stuttgart Conservatory. Initially, he pursued a career as a cellist, holding orchestral positions in Vienna and Stuttgart. In 1886 he came to New York with his wife Therese Förster, who was engaged as a soprano at the Metropolitan Opera. While he continued to work as a cellist, in the States Herbert concentrated on composing and conducting. His Cello Concerto in E minor is still played. For a decade and a half up until the First World War, he was perhaps the most famous composer of operetta in the U.S.
The Serenade for String Orchestra was composed in 1884 when Herbert was still living in Germany. It is a highly romantic work in which we sometimes can hear the future operetta composer. The first of its five movements is entitled Aufzug, it is a bright, upbeat march. The second movement is titled Polonaise, but is more like a lively waltz. The third movement, Liebes-scene (love scene) was praised by The New York Times as “a particularly good piece of writing, being warm in theme and forceful in expression, and showing the
results of careful study of Wagner’s wonderful treatment of strings.” It is followed by a playful Canzonetta, and the piece is capped by a joyful finale.
Listen to: The Orchestra Now (TŌN), conducted by Andrés Rivas
4. Edvard Grieg, Holberg Suite (1884-85, Norway)
Listen to: Netherlands Chamber Orchestra | Gordan Nikolic (violin / concertmaster):
5. Carl Nielsen, Little Suite for String Orchestra in A minor Op 1 (1888, Denmark)
Nielsen composed the Little Suite for String Orchestra when he was only 22 and was still studying composition at the Conservatory. Its first performance at the Tivoli Hall in Copenhagen was a great success. Nielsen, who played in the orchestra, was called back several times and the middle movement was played as an encore. Critics at the time wrote: "...presented in a beautiful, concise form, modestly and attractively, with excellent part-writing and an appealing fullness of sound that reveals an excellent eye for the string material." There are three movements. The suite's rather short elegiac first movement is reminiscent of Scandinavian Romanticism as expressed by Grieg and Svendsen. The Intermezzo, a waltz, gives a hint of the composer's love of triple time, and features the occasional flat seventh notes that would later become so characteristic of Nielsen's music. The comparatively expansive Finale opens solemnly with the elegy theme but soon breaks loose into an animated sonata form in which Nielsen reintroduces the opening theme.
Listen to: Zagreb soloists.
6. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Souvenir de Florence in D minor Op 70 (1890, Russia)
"Souvenir de Florence" originally saw the light of day as a string sextet scored for 2 violins, 2 violas, and 2 cellos. The composer sketched one of the work's principal themes while visiting Florence, where he composed his opera The Queen of Spades. The work was arranged for string orchestra early on, for starters in 1893 by Anton Seidl at New York's Carnegie Hall. Various versions can still be heard today, for example with or without double basses and with a varying proportion of solo parts.
The first movement is in sonata form and, without introduction, presents a rather violent yet melodic first theme in D minor. The second theme, in the dominant major key of A major, is much calmer; it flows from the first theme almost effortlessly and then proceeds into the development and recapitulation, which concludes with a quick coda. The slow movement, in D major, has a very innocent, romantic theme initially stated by the first violin with pizzicato accompaniment before being taken up by the cello. The third movement in A minor is a yearning Intermezzo, which shows the composer's symphonic qualities and the lively rhythms of his ballets. The fourth movement, Allegro vivace in D minor, is characterized by folk-like melodies and rhythms, but surprisingly Tchaikovsky has inserted a fugue after the re-exposition, before concluding with a magnificent coda.
Listen to: Amsterdam Sinfonietta, Candida Thompson [violin/direction]
7. Josef Suk, Serenade in E-flat for Strings Op 6 (1892, Czech)
Josef Suk (1874-1935) was born in a small Bohemian village where his father who was the local teacher and choirmaster taught him music. The climax of Suk's music studies was the year spent between 1891 and 1892 as a pupil of Dvorak at the Prague Conservatory. After this, Suk divided his career between playing second violin in the Czech Quartet and composition. The link with Dvorak and his family was cemented in 1898 when Suk married Otillie, Dvorak's daughter (her early death in 1905 gave rise to one of Suk's greatest works, the Asrael Symphony). Dvorak can take some credit for the inception of Suk's Serenade since he was keen to steer the young composer away from "minor key introspection." The Serenade is mainly major-key and generous. There are also links with Dvorak's E-major Serenade of 1875, notably in the leisurely imitative opening of the first movement and the buoyant vigor of the finale. But there is also much of Suk's individuality: a tendency to veer towards the minor, an exquisite evocation of birdsong at the end of the Adagio and superb control of proportion and instrumentation.
Listen to: New York Classical Players, Dongmin Kim, conductor
8. Hubert Parry, Suite in F "Lady Radnor's Suite" (1894, Britain)
Hubert Parry (1848-1918) was a Victorian composer and professor of music, known for his massive oratorios, cantatas and other choral music, but also five symphonies (influenced by Brahms), a piano concerto and some fine chamber music. Among those who studied under Parry at the Royal College were Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, Frank Bridge and John Ireland. As he was such a monument in his time, later opinion about his worth was divided. Due to the wide range of his activities, his compositional oeuvre fell short, but for many years he was the lynchpin of English musical life, including
through his publications. Parry's style was heavily influenced by Bach and Brahms, yet has a character of its own, sometimes angular, due to the diatonicism he frequently employed. In any case, it is remarkable how unmistakably "English" his music sounds.
Parry's Suite in F was written for Helen, Countess of Radnor, of Longford castle, Salisbury, wife of the fifth earl, who founded and ran a string orchestra (a hobby of more than one wealthy Lady at the time). The movement titles (Prelude; Allemande; Sarabande; Bourree; Minuet and Gigue) pay homage to Bach's suites, a composer about whom Parry wrote a study. This is Parry in a light vein, the spirit of the dance pervading each movement. The strongly rhythmical theme of the Prelude carries no hint of pastiche, as is true for the whole suite. The Allemande is subdued and elegant. The Sarabande begins with a portentous theme before turning gently lyrical. The pearl of the suite is the slow Minuet for muted strings. The final Gigue has a distinctly Irish flavor.
Performance listened to: City of London Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox on EMI
9. Mieczysław Karłowicz – Serenade for Strings in C Op 2 (1897, Poland)
Mieczysław Karłowicz (1876-1909) composed only one symphony (and did so in his school days), but his six
symphonic poems secured him the position of Poland's greatest symphonic
composer. Other than that, his compositions are few and include the
graceful Serenade op. 2 for a string orchestra; the wonderful, virtuoso
Violin concerto op. 8 in A Major; and charming youthful songs. What
would Karłowicz's output have looked like had he not been killed by an
avalanche at the age of 33?
The Serenade is a very early work, his first orchestral piece. Inspired by the example of Robert Volkmann's highly popular string serenades, this pretty and lively work already reveals expert craftsmanship while remaining stylistically within the German romantic tradition. It consists of a March, a Romance, a Waltz and to cap things a charming finale. It is still heard frequently today, especially in Poland.
Also see my discussion of Karlowicz's symphonic poem "Eternal Songs".
Listen to: Wald Ensemble, Conductor Holly Hyun Choe.
10. Carl Reinecke, Serenade for Strings in G minor Op.242 (1898, Germany)
The German composer, conductor and pianist Carl Reinecke (1824-1910) was also very important as an educator. Among his many students were Grieg, Bruch, Janacek, Albeniz, Sinding, Svendsen, Reznicek, Delius, Arthur Sullivan and George Chadwick, to name a few. He eventually rose to the position of Director of the Leipzig Conservatory and also served as the conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He composed in virtually every genre, from opera to orchestral and chamber music.
At age 74, Carl Reinecke wrote the finest of his nine serenades. Upon its premiere the charming and entertaining work was received warmly by both the public and local critics. It consists of six movements: Marcia, Arioso, Scherzo, Cavatina, Fughetta giojosa and Finale.
Each of the six movements is quite individualistic and includes some
unusual features – in particular, the striking Cavatina in 5/4 time. In the second movement, Arioso, we hear echoes of Reinecke's great example, Schumann, while the subject of the Fughetta giojosa is presented in four parts before
Reinecke inverts the subject, and the music ultimately morphs into a genial waltz. Both the opening minor-key March and the major-key section of the Cavatina are recalled in the Finale. The whole work is suffused with beautiful sound.
P.S. Reinecke also wrote a beautiful cello sonata.
Listen to: Haydn Youth String Orchestra conducted by Jan-Ype Nota
11. Arnold Schoenberg, Verklärte Nacht (1899 / 1917, Austria)
Verklärte Nacht is a symphonic poem for string sextet composed in 1899 by Arnold Schoenberg, and arranged for string orchestra in 1917. Schoenberg revised this version again in 1943. The work is inspired by a poem of Richard Dehmel, which describes a man and woman walking through a dark forest on a moonlit night. The woman shares a dark secret with her new lover: she bears the child of another man. It ends with the man's acceptance of the woman. The poem as well as Schoenberg's music were shocking for their time: filled by a new, anti-bourgeois sexual morality as well as the idea of an all-conquering Eros that shuns every convention. Schoenberg was not yet in his Twelve-tone period, but the piece is written in a highly advanced harmonic idiom, with a rich chromaticism (deriving from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde) and frequent use of musical phrases which undermine the metrical boundaries. The music follows the poem's structure, which consists of five stanzas of differing length; it is in fact based on a rondo-like ABACA pattern, with the recurring A section representing the moonlit walk, the B section the woman's confession and the C section the man's reply. (Based on my description of the string sextet in the article Best String Sextets at this blog)
Listen to: Norwegian Chamber Orchestram Terje Tønnesen, leader
Bud Beyer, stage direction
12. Edward Elgar, Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Op. 47 (1905, Britain)
Elgar's "Introduction and Allegro for Strings" was composed in 1905 for performance in an all-Elgar concert by the newly formed London Symphony Orchestra. Scored for the unusual combination of a string quartet and a full string orchestra, Elgar composed it to show off the players' virtuosity. The work follows the classical structure of the concerto grosso with a
solo quartet (the concertino) conversing with the rest of the ensemble
(the ripieno), the fugue of its Allegro also contributing to the Neo-classical character of the piece.
Its introduction is inspired by a Welsh folk theme. The work is very characteristic of the composer, full of typical Elgarian melody, especially the big tune in D major that comes in the middle of the Allegro. A very concise but also very great work, one of the best I know for string orchestra.
Listen to: A Far Cry
13. Frank Bridge, Suite for String Orchestra (1909-10, Britain)
Frank Bridge (1879-1941) began his career as a rehearsal conductor of various chamber orchestras. After Henry Wood hired him more and more frequently to conduct various promenade concerts, his fame grew. Bridge was also a music teacher, his most important student being Benjamin Britten. The latter composed a variation work for strings based on a theme by Bridge at the beginning of his career (see Part Two of this post). This work received international attention, from which Bridge also profited. Bridge wrote mainly chamber music and some large-scale orchestral works, initially in a conventional style, but over time his works have increasingly modern structures.
The Suite for String Orchestra is beautifully designed and technically sophisticated. "Bridge was a highly accomplished string player and the suite is clearly the work of someone who knew exactly what he was about. It has a technical polish and depth of feeling which make it one of the most satisfying of all Bridge's music. Thematic transformations are deftly achieved and the Nocturne hauntingly exposes a world of private intensity. Other parts of the suite show that charm and vein of wistfulness that were features of Bridge's earlier music. [...] It brings to an orchestral ensemble that command of purely musical thought which distinguished Bridge's chamber music of the period." (From the notes by John Bishop to the Chandos CD)
Performance listened to: English Camber Orchestra conducted by David Garforth on Chandos.
14. Ralph Vaughan Williams – Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910, Britain)
Vaughan Williams’s rhapsodic masterpiece is well suited to socially-distanced performance – he divides his forces into two mini-orchestras and a string quartet, and asks for them to be placed as far apart as possible, to weave a web of luminous sound around the listener. The fantasy is based on one of nine themes by Thomas Tallis (1505-1585), which were to be published in Archbishop Parker's Psalter in 1567. The publication was initially banned. Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote his Tallis Fantasia around the phrygian theme "Why fumeth in fight?" Originally, Tallis's theme was intended to be repeated twice at the end of the fantasia, but the composer eventually refrained from doing so. Vaughan Williams wrote the fantasy, with its distinctive scoring, especially for the Norman stone architecture of Gloucester Cathedral. The resonance of three string sections could be done justice there. The Tallis Fantasia is one of Vaughan Williams' best-known works, and together with the Introduction and Allegro by Elgar, it forms the peak of Britain's important tradition of music for string orchestra..
Listen to: Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by John Wilson.
15. Gustav Holst, St Paul's Suite Op 29 No 2 (1912-13, Britain)
Holst (1874-1934) wrote this suite for strings in 1912, but due to revisions it remained unpublished until 1922. The work was originally titled Suite in C, but he later named the piece after St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, London, where Holst served as director of music from 1905 to 1934. He wrote it in gratitude to the school after it built him a soundproof study.
With his St. Paul’s Suite, Holst used the vocal affinity of the string orchestra to good effect in his setting of four English folk songs. The jig of the first movement shows an affinity for the sort of fiddling that would accompany song and dance in English and Irish traditions. The second movement is also brief and based on a simple premise: the second violins provide a constant stream of eighth notes as accompaniment to a tune in the first violins that is reminiscent of a country waltz. The intermezzo is more operatic in its ambition, although it maintains its role as a light diversion. Over a delicate pizzicato accompaniment, the solo violin sings its aria, complete with some exotic, chromatic turns. The finale features the most famous song in the suite: the “dargason” was a well-known ballad tune in the sixteenth century, and it appears first in a setting reminiscent of the hurdy gurdy, with the jaunty melody unfurling over a drone.
Listen to: The New York Classical Players, Dongmin Kim, conductor
16. Max Bruch, Serenade on Swedish Folk Melodies (1916)
The Serenade for Strings on Swedish Folk Melodies is a reworking of an orchestral suite written a dozen years before in 1904, but though Bruch was in his late seventies, isolated and devastated by the effects of WWI, he had not lost his touch. The tunes are delicious, and Bruch’s arrangements are perfectly charming, tasteful, and spirited. The writing for strings is spotless.
The March, originally only at the end of the orchestral suite, appears in a lightly modified form as the first movement of the serenade; it is inspired by the Coronation March for Charles XII (c. 1700). The second and fourth movements take two love songs as their theme while the third movement draws on a Dalecarlian dance. The finale is beautifully delicate, especially the very end of the movement. This serenade is a work which takes its rightful place besides Grieg’s Holberg Suite or Dag Wirén’s Serenade.
17. Peter Warlock, Capriol Suite (1926, Britain)
Peter Warlock, a pseudonym for Philip Arnold Heseltine (1894 -1930), was an English composer and music critic. He used the pseudonym Peter Warlock as a composer and his birth name as a critic. His education was largely traditional and included studies at Eton College, Christ Church, and University College London. Musically, he was mainly self-taught and learned composition by studying the works of composers he admired, especially Frederick Delius, Roger Quilter, and Bernard van Dieren. He was also strongly influenced by the music and poetry of the Elizabethan age, as well as Celtic culture. Warlock's compositions are almost exclusively songs, although the Capriol Suite for string orchestra is among his best-known works.
The Capriol Suite is a set of dances composed in October 1926. Originally written for piano duet, Warlock later scored it for both string and full orchestras. According to the composer, it was based on tunes in Thoinot Arbeau's Orchésographie, a manual of Renaissance dances. Nevertheless, Warlock's biographer, Cecil Gray, wrote that "if one compares these tunes with what the composer has made of them it will be seen that to all intents and purposes it can be regarded as an original work". The six individual movements are very brief; a performance of the suite lasts about 10 minutes.
Listen to: The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Henning Kraggerud, leader
18. Igor Stravinsky, Apollon musagète (1927-28, U.S.)
Apollon musagète, "Apollo, captain of the muses", is a ballet in two scenes for string orchestra by Igor Stravinsky, written in Nice between July 1927 and January 1928. The work was first performed at the Library of Congress in Washington on April 27, 1928. Apollo was commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, with the only restrictions being the number of dancers (12) and the duration (maximum 30 minutes).
Stravinsky chose Apollo, the leader of the muses, as the main theme, three of whom he chose for his ballet: Kalliope (muse of heroic epic), Polyhymnia (muse of the mimic art) and Terpsichore (muse of dance and lyrical poetry). It was to be a work without great contrasts, except the contrasts in dynamics, and without great emotions. It is precisely this absence of violent emotions that gives Apollo its characteristic serenity. The real subject, according to Stravinsky, was the art of verse, perhaps something arbitrary and artificial to most people, but to him art was arbitrary and had to be artificial. The basic rhythmic patterns in Apollo are iambic (punctuated: long-short, long-short) and the individual dances are the reverse of this (reverse punctuated or lombardic: short-long-short-long). Apollo is, Stravinsky said, a tribute to the French 17th century, and, with its musical alexandrines, particularly to Jean Racine.
The prologue shows the birth of Apollo, followed by a series of allegorical dances for Apollo and the three muses in which Apollo grants them the attributes that belong to them and eventually leads them to the Parnassus.
Listen to: hr-Sinfonieorchester conducted by Andrew Manze
19. Ottorino Respighi, Suite No 3 from Ancient Airs and Dances (1931, Italy)
Ancient Airs and Dances (Antiche arie e danze) is a set of three orchestral suites by Italian composer Ottorino Respighi, freely transcribed from original pieces for lute. In addition to being a renowned composer and conductor, Respighi was also a notable musicologist. His interest in Italian music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries led him to compose works inspired by the music of these periods.
These three suites are anything but orchestrations in a literal sense. In their tastefully modernized and even re-harmonized settings, they can be admired as virtually newly composed pieces which however happen to be based on older material. Suite No. 3 was composed in 1931. It differs from the previous two suites in that it is arranged for strings only and somewhat melancholy in overall mood. It is based on lute songs by Besard, a piece for Baroque guitar by Ludovico Roncalli, and lute pieces by Santino Garsi da Parma and additional anonymous composers. The four movements are "Italiana" (a galliard), "Arie di corte," "Siciliano" and "Passacaglia", an austere yet grandiose set of variations on a ground bass.
Listen to: Wald Ensemble, Conductor - Holly Hyun Choe
20. John Ireland, A Downland Suite (1932, Britain)
John Ireland (1879-1962) was a student of Charles Villiers Stanford in composition class; he studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1893 to 1901. Later, as a teacher at the same institution, his students included Benjamin Britten, Humphrey Searle, Ernest John Moeran and Alan Bush. Ireland's music is characterized by a contained, introspective lyricism, often emerging from impressions of nature - like Delius and Bax, he was an English impressionist. Ireland is the master of small form and small scoring: his strongest works are his short pieces for chamber ensemble, his piano works and his songs. The exception is his Piano Concerto in E-flat from 1930.
A Downland Suite was originally composed for brass band. When in 1941 Ireland began to make a version for strings, he completely reconceived it. However, only the two central movements had been finished when Ireland had to flee from his home in the Channel Islands to escape the German invasion. Work on the transcription was thereafter never resumed, but in 1978 the John Ireland Trust commissioned Geoffrey Bush (who had studied with Ireland and knew him well) to finish the work along similar lines. In the string version the Prelude and Minuet have been shortened and the Elegy considerably expanded.
[Performance listened to: English Chamber Orchestra conducted by David Garforth on Chandos]
21. Hendrik Andriessen, Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Johann Kuhnau, for string orchestra (1935, The Netherlands)
Hendrik Andriessen (1892-1981) was born in Haarlem. He studied with Zweers, but was mostly influenced by Cesar Franck and Alphons Diepenbrock. Like Diepenbrock, he was a Roman Catholic composer who in the first place wrote liturgical music as masses and organ music. He was organist of the Utrecht Cathedral and taught for two decades at the Institute for Catholic Church Music in Utrecht. He also was consecutively lecturer at the Amsterdam Conservatory, the Utrecht Conservatory and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Besides his voluminous church music, Andriessen wrote four symphonies, other orchestral works as the famous Variations and fugue on a theme by Kuhnau, and chamber and instrumental music. Also his Ricercare for orchestra, which commemorated the 200th anniversary of the death of J.S. Bach, is a notable work with its clean and Neoclassical textures. Andriessen was a modest man and his music is characterized by serenity.
"Variations and fugue on a theme by Johann Kuhnau," sometimes called "Kuhnau Variations" was composed in 1935 and is the composer's only work for string orchestra. Andriessen picked up the melody when his daughter was studying the Partita No. 6 from Neuer-Clavier-Übung by Johann Kuhnau at the piano. The composer found a minuet theme around which to write his composition. Andriessen handled Kuhnau's theme quite freely, by translating it into more modern classical music. Among
other things, he applied parallel fifths, which gives the work a serene
sound. The Variations do not deal with simple embellishments or any sort of instrumental virtuosity, but are an example of a deeply felt psychological interpretation of Kuhnau's theme. Each variation has a different length, a different emotional content and a different meter. Once in a while the original theme shines through the elaborate harmonic and melodic deviations. There are five variations concluded with a double fugue: 1. Theme moderato, 2. Grazisoso ma tranquillo, 3. Allegro con spirito, 4. Molto moderato e espressivo, 5. Sostenuto e espressivo, 6. Grave e passionato and 7. Allegretto con eleganza. The work is still regularly performed today.
Andriessen profile from my blog article Classical Music in the Netherlands Part 3.
Performance listened to: Netherlands Symphony Orchestra conducted by David Porcelijn on CPO.
22. Benjamin Britten, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10 (1937, Britain)
Britten was introduced to the music of Frank Bridge as a 12-year-old boy, but did not study with him until 1927. In 1932, Britten considered composing a Theme and Variations based on a theme Bridge had used in his 1906 Three idylls for string quartet. But as so often, this composition foundered in the volume of compositions Britten started (and never finished). That foundation then came in handy to Britten when Boyd Neel asked him to write a work for performance at the Salzburg Festival. Britten worked on it from June 5 to July 12, 1937, and by August 25, 1937 it was on the musicians' desks. Through this Theme and Variations, Britten creates a musical portrait of composer, friend and fellow pacifist Bridge. The theme from the Three idylls is reworked in various ways, and the entire work also breathes Bridge's mood. This is not surprising; Britten was a student of Bridge, but together they also shared a common musical instrument as performers, the viola. Thus, both knew all the possibilities (and impossibilities) of string instruments.
Each variation is a nod to a specific quality in Bridge's personality, but reflected through the prism of Britten's own personality. The Adagio represents Bridge's integrity; the March his energy; the Romance his charm; the Aria Italiana his humor; the Bourrée his tradition; the Wiener Walzer his enthusiasm; the Moto perpetuo his vitality; the Funeral March his sympathy; the Chant his reverence; the Fugue his skill (it contains a number of references to other works by Bridge); and their mutual affection appears in the Finale. These connections were made explicit on the score Britten presented to Bridge, but they do not appear in the printed score.
Listen to: Amsterdam Sinfonietta
Best Music for String Orchestra Part One (1875-1937)
Best Music for String Orchestra Part Two (1937-1978)
Classical Music Index