Thursday 20 November 2014

A Symphony Like No Other

I'm even a little surprised at myself, that it has taken me this long to get around to blogging about the music of a remarkable composer from Denmark, Carl Nielsen.  He's a firm favourite of mine and I could easily write a dozen posts about his music.  Well, all in good time....


This month the Toronto Symphony is giving a series of concerts pairing the symphonies of Nielsen with the piano concertos of Beethoven.  As unlike each other as they are, these two composers fit together surprisingly well and anyone who likes Beethoven should certainly give Nielsen a bit of a try.  There was one similar concert last year (read about it here:  A Repertory Staple and a Canadian Rarity) which featured Nielsen's Third Symphony, one of his sunniest creations.


This time around, it's the Fifth Symphony, and this work -- which was my introduction to Nielsen's music -- really is unlike any other symphony I have ever heard.


It consists of just two movements, the second somewhat longer than the first.  Unlike several of the preceding symphonies, this one has no title.  Unmistakable, though, is the sense that Nielsen is engaging in his most titanic struggle yet with the forces that strive to subdue Life in all its essence.  In saying that, I am referring to what George Bernard Shaw called "the Life Force" -- a concept which plainly finds a home in Nielsen's music as much as in the Irish dramatist's plays. 


The principal strength of Nielsen's music -- and the element which brings it close to Beethoven -- is the emphasis on rhythm as the driving force of the musical argument.  Also, and much more unusually for his time, Nielsen makes extensive use of unadulterated tonic major and minor chords and modes.  What is most unique about Nielsen is his method of casually jumping from chord to chord to chord, until any sense of a "home key" is lost.


Part of the strangeness of this particular symphony lies in the way it seems to abandon the traditional force driving symphonic argument -- the cut and thrust of interaction between themes.  In the Fifth Symphony, and especially in the first movement, the themes are set out, and simply sit there in contrast with each other.  The work opens with a wavering figure in the violas, alternating rapidly between 2 notes a third apart.  Eventually a melodic figure rises and falls in scale form on the violins.  A kind of shrill, wild skirling figure in the woodwinds is also heard.  All three of these elements appear and reappear without ever actually combining.  Then a militant rhythm is heard, rattled out repeatedly on the snare drum.  A theme of aspiring nobility arises from horns and strings and pursues its way into the brasses, unaffected by all the other material.  This solemn theme leads the way to the movement's climax.  The skirling woodwinds are heard again, fortissimo, and the snare drum returns, louder and louder -- Nielsen specifies that the drummer must "improvise as if at all costs he wants to stop the progress of the orchestra."  This wild improvisation, when played properly, should make the hair stand on end.  Eventually the noble theme swells louder and louder, swamps the militant drum, and proclaims its triumph in the full orchestra by converting the woodwinds to the melody.  But as the music slowly dies away, reminiscences of the drum motif are still heard from offstage (think Beethoven right at the end of the Missa Solemnis) and the movement ends with a mournful, plaintive solo clarinet.  Plainly the war is not yet ended.


The second movement opens with fiery energy, but with off-beats that take several moments to resolve into a clear triple-time pattern.  The heart of this movement is a high-speed, demonic fugue subject working its way through the various sections of the orchestra, which creates a battle almost as intense as the one in the first movement.  This exhausts itself and is then followed by a quieter, more severe fugue in the strings.  Eventually, the opening music returns and the symphony ends affirmatively on a clear tonic major chord.  Robert Simpson, in his book on Nielsen, suggested that this lengthy movement should either be analyzed very deeply or else described in the fewest number of words possible.


I am very much looking forward to hearing this symphony played live for the first time tonight, and will of course be writing about it in my "Large Stage Live" blog.  By the way, the companion work is the last and largest of Beethoven's piano concertos, the Concerto # 5 with Jan Lisiecki as soloist.

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