Endnotes, October 2024

St Mary Harrington, Lincolnshire, credit Wikipedia

Endnotes, October 2024

In this edition: more Bruckner from the archives * Dvorak from the Czech homeland * contemporary music from England and America, reviewed by Stuart Millson

SOMM Records continues to open its vast treasury of vintage Bruckner recordings, in this, the 200th anniversary year of the great Austrian composer’s birth. And our thanks must go to SOMM, not just for championing Bruckner, but for bringing into the limelight almost-forgotten (or, at least, neglected) conductors, such as Hans Schmidt- Isserstedt, a supreme interpreter of Beethoven, as those who know his Decca cycle of the nine symphonies will testify. For Beethoven, Schmidt-Isserstedt had the Vienna Philharmonic under his baton, but here in SOMM’s Bruckner (the Third Symphony in the 1878 Oeser Edition) we are treated to the equally magnificent playing of German Radio’s NDR Symphony Orchestra.

Originally recorded at the Musikhalle Hamburg in the December of 1966, the NDR players give us a version of a Bruckner symphony that many view as the first of the truly mature part of his cycle (which, like Beethoven, consisted of nine symphonies). The misterioso atmosphere of the opening movement — underpinned by a tense, Wagnerian forest-murmur feel in the NDR strings — sets the stage for the great panorama of struggle, action and nostalgia that is to come. And what must already have been a clear, ahead-of-its-time radio archive recording has now transferred to CD (thanks to sound restoration and remastering by recording specialist, Lani Spahr) to give dazzling, full-blooded Brucknerian sound.

The scherzo movement of the Third brings us out of the mainly gentle reflection of the Adagio, gripping the listener with a torrent of agitation, often verging on terror, as an intense, attacking volley of sound from the strings and battering brass cascades onward. Again, the NDR players capture the authentic Teutonic tread of Bruckner, bringing the symphony to a glorious conclusion with a radiant, unstoppable affirmation of earlier themes from the work.

Also on Somm’s CD is a 1958 Bavarian Radio ‘tape’ of the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Volkmar Andreae in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, ‘Romantic’ — possibly the most often played of the cycle, due, no doubt, to its more simple pastoral atmosphere and fairytale hunting-horn scherzo. A fine, bracing performance of the work awaits the listener, especially in the stormy, fiery interpretation of the first movement; and in a dreamy approach to the gentle heartbeats of the second — ending, with pizzicato and delicate timpani, as if a distant country procession has just disappeared out of view.

Still in the glades of Middle Europe, Pentatone has just issued a stunning set of the last three Dvorak symphonies, the partnership of Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic proving itself as among the greatest in the world today. The seventh, eighth and ninth symphonies (again — nine — that hallowed number for composers) are performed with a sense of utter conviction: a love for every note, a passion for every great tune, as if the Czech players are carefully setting down on record for posterity their personal family history. This recording is a testament to Bohemian romanticism; and to the patriot, Antonin Dvorak, the architect of that soulful, yet ebullient style, the musical magus of the Czech people.

The folkish, dance-like romp of colour that is the Eighth Symphony works well on this recording — almost like a 40-minute-long Slavonic dance. The more famous Ninth, subtitled ‘From the New World’, is a glorious fusion of the Czech homeland and the wide-open spaces of North America (surely the composer expresses a home-sickness in this work?) a land where Dvorak found himself feted at the end of the 19th century. But what is particularly interesting is the performance of the Symphony No. 7 (arguably the best, and the more enigmatic of the three) — a work that echoes Bruckner in its sense of struggle, of venturing forth into a dark landscape; allusions and feelings that are suggested in the mighty monoliths, ‘clenched-fist’ brass and grand gestures of the first movement, the rushing third-movement scherzo and the noble, brass-dominated, chorale-like ending. A real affirmation in music, but somehow not glorious, but firm, serious, stoical. Whatever your own personal response to Dvorak’s music, you probably won’t find a better-recorded set than by Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic.

Contemporary British composer, Peter Seabourne — a musician who rejected the extreme atonalism of many of his peers and immersed himself in a personal quest for artistic individuality and integrity — has issued an eighth volume of his Steps piano pieces. Subtitled, ‘Nineteen Album Leaves Caught by the Wind’, this latest chapter in Seabourne’s odyssey takes the listener into an almost freeze-framed autumnal sequence — a meditation of memories and impressions, sometimes hazy and valedictory, at other times with an intensity brewing just beneath the surface.

With titles such as: Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud — and After Autumn, Winter — the composer has created a new landscape of English pastoral music; but not an England of Edwardian twilight, instead the slanting light and chilly winds blowing across his own Lincolnshire horizon, interwoven with the deepest personal responses to the seasons of his own life.

Anyone seeking something of our own time, distilled into sound and made immediately relevant to life today, should listen to Peter Seabourne’s surprising and atmospheric music. Another recommendation for the CD is the quality of the piano-playing and recording: Michael Bell gives a masterclass for the instrument, while the Sheva contemporary label captures the piano at a perfect autumnal ‘temperature’ — always just a little less in the foreground, the piano never stark or clanging. The remainder of the album is given over to Seabourne’s settings of Emily Dickinson, with soprano, Karen Radcliffe, joining Michael Bell in a wonderfully woven cycle that, again, brings the listener into that lonely fenland.

Finally, to the work of two United States composers, not well known in Britain, but whose compositions deserve the attention of all who seek concert programmes enlivened by music that has something to say. Randall Svane continues to carve a reputation in the churches of the East Coast with a religious fervour not usually found in our nihilistic times. Although not yet appearing on CD, Quarterly Review has been fortunate to hear his Gloria — a setting that could easily be used as an alternative to similar works by Walton, Britten or Rutter — and which record producers, church music directors or those planning concert programmes should consider.

Likewise, New York composer Stanley Grill, offers music that continues where Britten’s War Requiem and other pacifist works left off. The composer writes of his own youthful anti-war zeal, and how with the onset of the years the radical tends to become the mellower sage, looking with the eye of a seasoned outsider on the vicissitudes of our turbulent times. Nonetheless, Grill remains loyal (as Walt Whitman would have put it) — ‘to thee, old cause…’ and informs us that his work may be found on the following platform:

https://stanleygrill.bandcamp.com/album/against-war

CD details: Bruckner from the Archives, Vol. 3. SOMM ARIADNE 5029-2.
Dvorak, Symphonies 7, 8, 9. PENTATONE, PTC 5187 216.
Peter Seabourne, Steps, vol. 8, Sheeva contemporary SH 326.

Stuart Millson is Classical Music Editor of Quarterly Review