Last November, I marshaled some evidence against the inanity of the proposition that the symphony is dead. Despite attempts to execute it, the symphony thrived in the 20th century and has prospered into our own era. It is hardly necessary to guide you to Sibelius, Shostakovich, Martinu, Prokofiev, Vaughan Williams, and the other big names. However, I have been at pains to direct attention to some major symphonists whose reputations have only lately come into their own, like Malcolm Arnold, David Diamond, Edmund Rubbra, Vagn Holmboe, Lazlo Lajtha, Kurt Atterberg, and Mieczyslaw Vainberg, to name a few. Yet what of Janis Ivanov’s 20 symphonies or Nikolai Miaskovsky’s 27? Much remains to be done, and written, about such substantial bodies of work. They will receive the separate articles they deserve. Meanwhile, I roam about in the musical interstices of the half- or completely forgotten to see what treasures I might find.
I cannot resist the temptation of beginning with a homeless composer. Proving itself at the forefront of adventurous programming, the CPO label has released the premiere recording of Gordon Sherwood’s music. Hailing from Evanston, Illinois (b. 1929), Sherwood lived as a beggar in Paris for ten years at what must have seemed the end of his career. However, the broadcast of a German film documentary, The Beggar of Paris, brought him to the attention of Ukrainian pianist Masha Dimitrieva who commissioned him to finish a piano concerto that he had begun 40 years earlier. This work is featured on the new CD, along with Sherwood’s Symphony No. I and his Sinfonietta. The last two movements of the symphony were premiered as the Gershwin Memorial Award Winner in 1957 by no less than Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic.
Sherwood’s peripatetic life from there on reads stranger than fiction. No one would believe it if it were made into a movie. Almost too good to be true, this happy ending brings us some very good music. The symphony and piano concerto sound like mainstream America from the 1950s. In fact, they remind me of the telegraphic intensity of Peter Mennin’s music but less harsh in their use of dissonance. The much lighter Sinfonietta is waltz-like and very lyrical. What a pleasant surprise from conductor Werner Andreas Albert and the very capable Bavarian Youth Orchestra.
Another eccentric, of an entirely different vein, is revealed in the Dacapo release of a selection of works by the Danish composer Paul von Klenau (1883-1946), who spent most of his career in Germany. When Klenau embraced Schoenberg’s twelve-tone style of composition in the 1930s, he defended it as “totalitarian” and therefore in perfect sync with Nazism. As bizarre as such a defense may have seemed, and as repugnant to Schoenberg as it must have been, there is a case to be made here, at least on a philosophical level. Nevertheless, Klenau’s works on this CD betray no trace of dodecaphony. He apparently constructed his own “key-determined twelve-tone theory” that pretty much defeats the whole purpose of Schoen- berg’s system. In fact, his Symphony No. 7, Die Sturmsymphonie, from 1941 is downright reactionary, a riveting cross between Anton Bruckner and perhaps Franz Schmidt, with occasional nods to Beethoven. Whatever its influences, it is masterful and compelling. I would love to hear his other eight symphonies.
The accompanying works on this CD demonstrate a similar mastery in a number of other idioms. The early Overture to Little Ida’s Flowers (1916) is an entrancing confection whose charm seems to come straight out of some of Tchaikovsky’s best ballet music. Bankholiday—Souvenir of “Hampstead Heath” (1923) is a mesmerizing impressionist evocation that ever so slowly and softly emerges from the mists with a boy alto singing “rain, rain, rain, andmist.” It is gorgeous music. The six dramatic songs with orchestra, Conversations With Death (1915), appeared only four years after Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. While sounding nothing like Mahler, they are very much in the late German Romantic vein. What begins as a remonstrance to death ends with a love song to it. The last song is simply breathtaking and quite unforgettable. The Odense Symphony Orchestra, under Jan Wagner, does a very good job with this demanding music in all its different styles. I have no idea if Klenau was a Nazi sympathizer or a little bit crazy, but there is an element of genius here, along with extraordinary craft. There is another CD of his symphonies (Nos. 1 and 5) available in Europe on Dacapo. I am tracking it down.
Swiss-born composer Ernst Levy (1895-1981) was never homeless, though he did have to flee his be-loved France from the Nazi invasion. By 1922, he was already perturbed by the “calcifying, deadening and, above all, a dehumanizing of music making… which is unfortunately the expression of our time.” However, he was undeterred by these modern trends in his own music making, which consisted in a prolific outpouring of 15 symphonies, many concertos, sonatas, quartets, and choral pieces. Opus One has released a recording of Levy’s Tenth Symphony, France, beautifully played by the National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra, under George Mariner Maull. I have been completely charmed by this music, which includes his lament on the fall of France, Élégie franÒ«asie, and play it at least once a month. It is really more a suite than a symphony. It could be easily criticized for too much repetition and too little development, but the fact remains: It is gorgeous. If someone can write themes this beautiful, it is fine with me if he repeats them. The first movement, Levy wrote, “is lyrical in the sense that it shows no dialectic development, but rather a hymnic one, its general character being joyful in a noble and graceful way.” And so Levy spins out extremely long melodic lines, one after another, sometimes on a solo instrument, sometimes gloriously clothed in orchestral dress. Please, Opus One, CPO, or Naxos, give us a complete traversal of Levy’s symphonies. I want to hear more of this lovely music.
Perhaps the new CD of contemporary music that I have enjoyed the most is CPO’s first installment of what it calls its Aulis Sallinen Edition, which I hope augurs a complete survey of his music, with the splendid Rhineland-Pfalz Philharmonic, under Ari Rasilainen. Sallinen (b. 1935) is a Finnish composer whom I last wrote about concerning his stunning masterpiece, Songs of Life and Death. I remarked then that I had been disappointed by a coarsening in some of his middle-period orchestral works. They had lost the evocative sense of mystery in which he had excelled in his earlier pieces. This CD features both early and recent works, the later proving that Sallinen has returned to form. A Solemn Overture (King Lear) and the Symphony No. 7 hail from the late 1990s and are coupled with the Symphony No. 1 and Chorali. The Overture is a bracing, icy, Sibelian work of turmoil and grandeur. The Seventh Symphony is subtitled Dreams of Gandalf. The score carries a note that explains that “the symphony does not actually depict the events in the novel [The Hobbit]; rather it is a musical expression of the literary atmosphere and poetry.” It is episodic and fanciful. The two early works, suffused with a sense of lament, are brilliant, subtle examples of Nordic nature mysticism. After 20 years of listening to them, they are still revealing their treasures to me.
The only thing that puzzles me is Sallinen’s remark that “there is nothing in common in the music of Sibelius and mine.” You could have fooled me. Sibelius is the obvious reference and starting point in each of these compositions. Sallinen feeds off the same sound world Sibelius created. He does very different things with these sounds—and in that he is correct but they are Sibelian, and that is part of their great attraction.
I have a pile of 25 more modern symphonies to go through that you probably have never heard. Stay tuned.