There is almost as
much of a stylistic chasm between Wellesz's
earlier symphonies (1-4) and the later
(5-9) symphonies as there is between
Braga Santos's symphonies of the 1940s
(1-4) and of the later decades (5-6).
Wellesz was never a romantic nationalist
of course.
His First Symphony,
written when he was sixty, is in three
movements. The first has a slightly
academic Bachian flavour like a rather
stern Stokowskian organ transcription.
This is clearly a very serious piece
of writing. The second movement is more
carefree - a model in lucid and dancingly
buzzing activity - sometimes it too
slips into fugal patterning. The final
molto adagio sostenuto has genuine
emotional depth, grave and touching;
more inward and emotional than the preceding
movements. The writing of this work
must have been a great release because
throughout the war he had been unable
to write a single note of music. As
a Jew he was, during the early 1930s,
relieved of all his academic appointments.
Seeing the savage writing on the wall
he emigrated to England where he became
a prestigious and much respected voice
at Oxford University. He also contributed
to Grove.
The Eighth Symphony
was premiered in a very different
world in 1971 in Vienna by Miltiades
Caridis. It is a work of emotional turbulence,
protesting anger (try the end of the
first and third movements) and drained
exhaustion expressed in the free-wheeling
language of dissonance and angularity
rather than of melody. It is a much
more compact work than the First at
about two-thirds the length of the earlier
piece. The Symphonischer Epilog
is in much the same dissenting
and fragmented pattern. There are moments
when the tense discontinuity of these
later works recalls late Havergal Brian
as in his Symphonies 24 to 32. Wellesz
like Brian has the genius to paint extraordinary
elusive moods; listen to the last few
moments of the Epilogue - a work, rather
like Brian's Symphonia Brevis,
that repays repeat listenings. The
Op. 108 work was premiered on 13 May
1977 by the Lower Austrian Musicians'
Orchestra conducted by Carl Melles.
The disc claims that
what he have here are symphonies 1 and
2 and the Epilog. The booklet and jewel
case insert are correct i.e. symphonies
1 and 8 and Epilog.
Wellesz’s is a stern
and haunted voice of the Jewish diaspora.
His music bears the wounds and scar
tissue of a life riven with dispossession
and exile. Is it any wonder that anger
rounds out this music like summer lightning.
The CPO Wellesz series is well
worth following.
Rob Barnett
Radio Symphonieorchester Wien/Gottfried
Rabl