A Musical Mount Everest: 36 Hours and 104 Symphonies With Joseph Haydn

One of the most daunting tasks in classical music is navigating the symphonic output of Joseph Haydn, the so-called “father” of the symphony. For most composers, the symphony is the most august, serious, philosophical statement one can make in music. A symphony is like a four-act play, with each act/movement capturing something of the struggle of being human, or of contemplating the divine. Even a light-hearted symphony is written ‘big,’ for the gargantuan modern symphony orchestra (often over one hundred players strong) and made to sound like the entire universe is singing. For this reason, many composers wait until middle-age to tackle a symphony, if only because the greatest composers are in their rear-view mirror, seeming hoarding the best themes, structures, and innovations. 

The Seven Voyages of Sibelius: An Appreciation of His Symphonic Cycle

About a hundred years ago, when symphony orchestras still drew large—and young!—audiences, Sibelius’ music featured on many programs, particularly his series of romantic-modernist symphonies. Not since Beethoven and Brahms was a composer’s voice so naturally attuned to symphonic thought, yet without making the listener feel the heavy lifting of contrapuntal development and sonata form. Like his contemporary, Gustav Mahler, Sibelius began with both feet planted firmly in the late Romantic period, yet with each symphony, he ventured further afield into the thickets of Modernism—on his own terms. Sadly, though his music is still often played by orchestras around the world, the average listener knows little of his music beyond orchestral hits like Finlandia, Valse Triste, or an excerpt from a longer suite, The Swan of Tuonela. His symphonies are often seen as derivative of Brahms or Tchaikovsky by some, while others find them too thorny or difficult (particularly the later ones). Many people would much prefer to hear something more familiar and toothsome and call it a night. 

Escaping the Cliche of Canon: 5 Lesser-Known Works of Mozart

The music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is as canonical as Shakespeare, no longer a matter of taste but a statement of musical fact.  However, as with Shakespeare, this is a double-edged sword, since once anything becomes a museum piece we begin to lose our connection to it.  The nervous, mercurial energy of Symphony No. 40 becomes background music in Panera Bread, and the bitersweet lamentations of the Requiem floats through a car commercial.  It’s a sad fact that even the most inspired music, if played too often—and in the wrong context—can become a cliche.  So how do we rediscover the Mozart that his contemporaries heard, the one that made Haydn (arguably the greatest composer of his age) to exclaim, “I tell you before God and the world, he is the greatest composer known to me”?  In the end, you have to “unhear” every musical cliche and start from scratch, listening to the music of his contemporaries and work your way forward to the musical masterpieces.  Or, perhaps more simply, you could listen to the lesser-known works of Mozart which, for one reason or another,  have escaped the broad brush of cliche.  Here are 5 works which I think represent every facet of Mozart’s genius: his melody, his harmony, his orchestration, his eccentricity (especially his penchant for the minor mode), and his forward-thinking appeal to modern audiences (at times you really think Mozart is a Romantic).  There is no good reason these works have not passed into the public domain, so to speak, but I’m glad they haven’t.  When you listen to them, you almost go, “my God, what music—who composed it?” and then remember, right, it’s Mozart.  Then you start to realize why great composers become great; not just because your teachers said so, but because you, too, can hear this greatness.  Just don’t tell the people who supply music to on-hold services and Panera Bread! 

Vaughan-Williams: the Greatest Symphonist You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

Ralph Vaughan-Williams (1872-1958) isn’t exactly a footnote in the musical history books, nor is he a one-hit wonder.  Nevertheless, he is still somewhat neglected in the concert halls (in the States, anyway), which rarely play his 9 symphonies, preferring his lighter works such as The Lark Ascending or Fantasia from Greensleves (fine works though they are).  The reason for his neglect is hard to fathom.  His music is full of gorgeous, memorable melodies, yet is hardly a throwback to 19^th century Romanticism, being bold, exciting, and often dissonant.  Almost every bar of Vaughan-Williams’ music bears his unique thumbprint, and you couldn’t mistake him for anyone else, though others have freely borrowed from him (including his near-namesake, John Williams, the film composer).  He wrote in almost every form imaginable, leaving masterpiece after masterpiece: a gorgeous concerto for two (!) pianos, an outsized ballet on the Book of Job, folk-like chamber works, and numerous stand-alone orchestral works, such as the monumental Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, which pits a solo string quartet against a string orchestra.  Yet it is as a symphonist that Vaughan-Williams found his truest voice.  These nine works sing out with incredible power and beauty, but also a sense of deep morality.  They seem, in some respects, to represent the voice of England’s conscience during the first 5 decades of the 20^th century.  From the wide-eyed, philosophic Sea Symphony (No.1) to the stark, sometimes sardonic, mystical Ninth Symphony, his works seem a call to arms; not to fighting for king and country, perhaps, but as a witness to humanity’s horror and heroism.  Like his contemporary, the Russian composer, Dimitri Shostakovich, Vaughan-Williams wrote for his generation in a voice they would understand, and that we, listening backward from the ‘future,’ can appreciate as one of the great hallmarks of orchestral literature.

Focus on Sergei Rachmaninov, Part I: Symphony No.3 (1936)

Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninov is something of a 20th century enigma: he doesn’t fit neatly into the parade of modernist composers who blossomed in Europe and Russia in the early years of the 20th century, and he stubbornly resisted the tide of serialism that conquered the composing world soon after WWI. However, it is incorrect to call him an anachronism, either, as his music could not have been written in the 19th century, and throughout his works are subtle hallmarks of a ‘modern’ ear, one that combined the true sensibility of Romanticism with a world-weary, and at times, despairing 20th century outlook. Even before his death, the critical music world dismissed him as a has-been (and to some, a never-was), though his works stubbornly refused to disappear from the repertory. Audiences clamored to hear his 2nd and 3rd piano concertos, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, his 2nd symphony, and numerous piano works, including the haunting, often Chopinesque Preludes. It wasn’t until serialism had run its course (and even academics were admitting that audiences would never completely warm to its rigors) that conductors, musicians, and critics began the ‘thaw’ of Rachmaninov’s legacy. Sure, some of the works never entirely fell out of favor, but what of all the other works—the 2 other piano concertos, the 3 other symphonies, and a slew of piano works that few pianists dared to attempt (such as the First Piano Sonata, or the unrevised version of the Second). Today, Rachmaninov is one of the most-recorded composers in the catalogue, his reputation as a 20th century master firmly established, and a true link between the generation of Tchaikovsky and the neo-Romantics, including many modernist-Romantics such as Samuel Barber and Erich Korngold. 

This is the first post of many where I will examine some of his ‘forgotten’ works, which even today, are lesser-known (though often prolifically recorded), and belie his status as an “old fashioned” composer, or as Stravinsky once accused him, a painter who abandoned fresh watercolors for stale oils.  Hearing this works alongside his more famous music gives us a complex portrait of an artist who continued to grow and evolve, even though his unique musical thumbprint appeared at an early age.  Though he would never be as radical as Schoenberg, or as innovative as Bartok, he offered profound solutions to the question of musical meaning in a disillusioned age.  Rachmaninov’s piano sounds like no one else’s before or since, and his orchestra, though spiced with the aromas of Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss, finds its own solitary byways that few composers dared—or were able—to follow. 

Symphony No.3: This late, autumnal symphony was largely rejected by both the modernists and the traditionalists when it appeared in 1936.  Modernists, of course, found it another example of his mawkish melodrama, while friends more in sympathy with Rachmaninov, such as the composer-pianist Nikolai Medtner, exclaimed that he had jumped to the modernist’s camp!  The reasons for this confusing critical assessment are not hard to discern: the symphony marries Rachmaninov’s traditional melodies and flow with a growing appreciation for American music, as well as, perhaps, a deeper understanding of Stravinsky’s art.  His orchestration is leaner, more muscular, and yet more inventive than in previous works, such as the gargantuan, and sometimes densely scored Second Symphony.  Chief among his orchestral innovations is his focus on rhythmic elements, which to me suggests allusions to the American scene—jazz and Broadway above all.  The opening movement, however, is most memorable for its sense of overwhelming longing; it has been called his “Exile” symphony, for Rachmaninov had abandoned Russia after the Revolution and was never to return.  He spent his last decades in America, shored up in Southern California along other European ex-pats such as Schoenberg and Stravinsky.  For such a deeply Russian composer (at least in the sense that his music carries a significant national stamp), composing in America must have been a tricky proposition (all the more so in Beverly Hills!). Many attributed his long compositional silence to his exile, though it probably had more to do with an endless round of concert engagements to pay the bills. 

At any rate, the Third Symphony exhibits Rachmaninov at the height of his powers, and like the Second Symphony, it opens with a motto theme that provides material for the entire movement—a haunting tune for 2 clarinets, horn and muted cello, which then explodes into a rhythmic clatter.  This subsides into more typical Rachmaninov, a searching, wistful theme which seems to speak of exile and old Russia (it also slightly resembles a more agitated version of the slow movement of Piano Concerto No.4).  Rachmaninov develops this in many unusual ways, often more typical of his scherzo movements than a first movement.  His use of percussion and rhythmic effects nicely offset his familiar melodic strain, making the movement a refined, subtle, but always provocative masterpiece.  The slow movement is the most interesting movement, as it combines slow movement and scherzo, offering us one of his greatest romantic themes, but not letting it run the show as in the Second Symphony.  A jolly, sardonic march intrudes early on, dominating the movement until the gorgeous theme reasserts itself.  The finale that follows is cut from the same cloth as the opening movement, with boisterous, scherzo-like rhythm occasionally broken up by moments of painful nostalgia.  I honestly feel like this was Rachmaninov’s way of composing in an ‘American’ style without compromising his essential aesthetic.  It is more athletic and lean, yet everything sounds exactly like him.  I truly admire his ability, quite late in life, to unleash a side of him left dormant (to some degree) since his First Symphony, where melody was firmly held in check for symphonic development.  While I wouldn’t say this is necessary better than his more famous Second Symphony, it is surely its equal—and superior for its ability to conform to new styles and be influenced by his adopted homeland. 

I have never heard a bad recorded version of this symphony, though I would recommend the following versions highly: Dutoit with the Philadelphia Symphony, Jansons with the St. Peterburgh Philharmonic, Ashkenazy with the London Symphony, and Ormandy with the Philadelphia (the pioneer recording).