Here is another cleverly
assembled complete box from CPO. Once
again - as they did with Milhaud, Rangström,
Frankel, Atterburg and Peterson-Berger
- CPO have plundered their catalogue
to create an intégrale to tempt
the Toch first timer. The cover is new
and so is the rear insert but inside
the old-fashioned double-width case
are three CDs and three separate booklets,
the latter exactly as printed for the
original issues.
All seven Toch symphonies
date from his years in the States. The
First Symphony was written when
he was 63. Its textures are busy - almost
fussily so - and much of the writing
has a determined fugal quality that
carries over into the flighty second
movement. The third movement opens with
a long and desolate flute solo which
sounds rather like Debussy’s Faune
having woken to a cold dawn. The
finale rises from silence with a dissonant
and disillusioned call to arms - one
of those dodecaphonic sun-rises. The
modernism here is not extreme but is
still quite unmistakable. The effect
is softened a little by the atonal singing
of the violins at 2:02 and the trumpet’s
outlined elegy quietly intoned. It is
as if in memory of the sorrowing fanfare
that acts as signature for Franz Schmidt’s
Fourth Symphony. I got to know this
work from a tape dub of an LP made by
the very artists who premiered the work
in Austria on 22 December 1950: the
Vienna Symphony Orchestra conducted
by Herbert Häfner. The LP was EMA
101. That tape, while still of archive
interest, can now be pensioned off.
The Fourth Symphony
is dedicated to Marian MacDowell,
the widow of the composer Edward MacDowell
whose Peterborough artists’ colony served
as retreat and refuge for several composers
including Toch. Toch’s text, to be read
between movements I and II and II and
III of this three movement work, is
printed in the booklet. Here it is spoken
by the conductor. The words to be end
with ‘What you released in me / Must
return to you’. These words are included
at the end of the tracks carrying the
first and second movements. The music
is gently dissonant like the Shostakovich
of the 1930s but rises to a protesting
clamour then sinks into an ethereal
shimmer on the horizon - magical! Again
it is good to be able to relegate to
storage my tape of Dorati’s premiere
with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.
The Second Symphony
followed hot on the heels of the
First - some parallels with Martinů
here! If the First Symphony has its
unlikely links with Luther, of all people,
the troubled and anguished Second carries
the superscription ‘I will not let you
go unless you bless me.’ (Genesis 32:26).
The dedication is to Albert Schweitzer
- a man he had never met or corresponded
with. The work was premiered by Häfner
and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra who
had also introduced the First Symphony.
In this work Toch finds his feet. The
sehr leicht second movement flies
along with winged heels - atonal Mendelssohn?
The music has both fantasy and nobility
with many ingratiating and inventive
touches. The final pages are remarkable
for their off-key piano-accented triple
forte martellato. After the thudding
kettle drums the work ends with an almost
Beethovenian pay-off. This is a work
I will be returning to.
The Third Symphony
was awarded the 1956 Pulitzer Prize
for music: http://www.nndb.com/honors/482/000062296/
The award was made
for original use of new instruments
including a Hammond organ, glass balls
(instead of a vibraphone), a wooden
box containing wooden balls and three
horns mounted on a board and fed with
compressed air. A witty central movement
includes a stiff-legged tip-toe introduction
that is to return Tippett-like in the
finale. Again the music is modernistic
but not outright avant-garde. The final
sprint is a display of uproarious virtuosity.
It would be interesting to know how
this disc compares with the reading
by William Steinberg and the Pittsburgh
Symphony Orchestra recorded on Capitol
shortly after they had premiered it
on 2 December 1955. It was reissued
as part of the EMI Matrix series in
the 1990s on EMI 7243 5 65868 2 6.
The third disc has
the last three symphonies, each playing
for between 22 and 24 minutes. Like
Rubbra and Alwyn, Toch had become more
concise and concentrated over the years;
not that any one of the symphonies is
of epic proportions. Jephta,
the Fifth Symphony, subtitled
Rhapsodic Poem has been recorded
before ... several times. There was
a late Louisville tape. This first appeared
on LP in 1965 a couple of years after
Toch’s death. I know that recording
by Robert Whitney and the Louisville
Orchestra from its presence on an Albany
CD (TROY021-2) from 1989. It was recently
reissued by Matt Walters as part of
his ambitious First Edition series on
FECD035 with other Louisville recordings
of Peter Pan, Notturno and
the Miniature Overture. Both
Albany and First Edition lack the brilliance
of this tense reading by Alun Francis
whose sense of the cataclysm has perhaps
been deepened by his involvement in
CPO’s cycle of the Pettersson symphony
series. There’s also a more relaxed
reading by Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle
Symphony Orchestra as part of the Naxos
Milken series (8.559417).
The Sixth Symphony
was written in the same year the
Fifth was completed. It is often playful,
bubbling and light-hearted - almost
Prokofiev Kijé - but with
scathing dissonant asides intervening.
Gritty brass writing and singing sprung
strings, a Mexican trumpet fanfare,
serene and nostalgic chamber asides
of cheery Viennese disposition recalling
the First Symphony. All these are part
of the fantastic paraphernalia employed.
Wonderful to hear this music in good
sound after years of some familiarity
via a tape of the Swiss radio premiere
by the South German Radio Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Helmut Wesseltherer. The
Seventh Symphony has a thoughtful
first movement, another playful gift
of a central movement and a tormented
then smilingly musing Allegro risoluto.
The helpful notes are
by Toch’s grandson, Lawrence Weschler.
Toch took hard the
comparative obscurity of his declining
years in the USA. He complained to close
friends that he had been a dachshund
in the States where in years decayed
and lost he had been a St Bernard in
Germany. While his entanglements with
Hollywood did not deliver the sort of
success garnered by Korngold he still
rated performances by Koussevitsky,
Dorati, Steinberg and many other leading
figures in the American musical firmament.
Listening to these lucidly scored symphonies
in which fantasy is often loosed off
he had no reason to doubt his powers.
Among these seven symphonies the Second
and Third are the prizes though all
have riches to disclose on repeat hearings.
Rob Barnett
Complementary Reviews:
Symphonies
1, 4
Symphonies
2, 3
Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra/Alun Francis
