Originally posted by Pabmusic
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Dutton have released this:
This is an important release. RVW made two major revisions of the 1914 score (that is, the one reconstructed from the orchestral parts by George Butterworth & pals after RVW had sent the original to Germany in July 1914 - bad timing!) as well as many tinkerings. Richard Hickox recorded the 1914 score, but the one we are used to is the 1936 score, incorporating tinkerings from 1933.
However, the first major revision was for the 1920 publication of the score. (The booklet says that, once it was in print, the symphony was played often - Bournemouth heard it 15 times in 12 years - Dan Godfrey's doing, no doubt). This is the version recorded here. It has in fact been recorded twice before: Dan Godfrey recorded it with the LSO - acoustically - in 1925. That performance had a 15-bar cut in the epilogue, but did include the repeat in the scherzo. Then Eugene Goossens recorded it in 1941 with the Cincinnati SO. This had no cuts but omitted the scherzo repeat. Both these versions have been on CD, Godfrey's still is:
The 1933/36 'authorised' version was not universally accepted. Boult certainly regretted the loss of many passages. Most famously, Bernard Herrmann wrote of his disappointment of the loss of "six remarkable bars" in the slow movement:
Years later he taxed RVW with their omission. RVW replied:
The 1920 version is 97 bars shorter than the 1914 one, but 48 bars longer than the 'authorised' one.
This is an important release. RVW made two major revisions of the 1914 score (that is, the one reconstructed from the orchestral parts by George Butterworth & pals after RVW had sent the original to Germany in July 1914 - bad timing!) as well as many tinkerings. Richard Hickox recorded the 1914 score, but the one we are used to is the 1936 score, incorporating tinkerings from 1933.
However, the first major revision was for the 1920 publication of the score. (The booklet says that, once it was in print, the symphony was played often - Bournemouth heard it 15 times in 12 years - Dan Godfrey's doing, no doubt). This is the version recorded here. It has in fact been recorded twice before: Dan Godfrey recorded it with the LSO - acoustically - in 1925. That performance had a 15-bar cut in the epilogue, but did include the repeat in the scherzo. Then Eugene Goossens recorded it in 1941 with the Cincinnati SO. This had no cuts but omitted the scherzo repeat. Both these versions have been on CD, Godfrey's still is:
The 1933/36 'authorised' version was not universally accepted. Boult certainly regretted the loss of many passages. Most famously, Bernard Herrmann wrote of his disappointment of the loss of "six remarkable bars" in the slow movement:
...one of the most original poetic moments in the entire symphony. It is at this moment as though, when the hush and quietness have settled over Bloomsbury of a November twilight, that a damp drizzle of rain slowly falls, and it is this descending chromatic ponticello of the violins that so graphically depicts it.
Years later he taxed RVW with their omission. RVW replied:
Oh, it's much too long, much too long, and there was some horrid modern music in the middle - awful stuff. I cut that out - couldn't stand it.
The 1920 version is 97 bars shorter than the 1914 one, but 48 bars longer than the 'authorised' one.
One thing I am wondering now is whether the adjustments can be read in terms of the composer's attitudes to war. The first version - almost "Mahleresque" - was written just before WW1. The changes in the 1920 version with its fewer bars may indicate the lives that were lost including that of Butterworth. The further changes in 1933-36 coincided with significant political changes in Germany and culminated in the year of the first performance of "Dona Nobis Pacem" ("Grant Us Peace") in which there is a plea for peace by referring to recent wars during the growing fears of a new one. Given also the character of Symphony No 4 (1935) - I know he denied it was any overt statement but then he had to be cautious politically - the 1936 version of S2 could be seen as a putting 1914-1918 "to rest" and separating out any oblique "messages" in 2 and 4 with a view to the future.
The latter in that context would be about the nature of war and foreboding whereas the former becomes more of an antidote to war with its emphasis on civilian life and a normalcy which does link back to WW1 but also looks ahead to whatever is on the way to help see people through. That all runs in parallel with the clear musical progression/modernism? What it also does in being shorter still is re-emphasise the loss of lives in 1914-1918 in a similar way to the 1920 edit which is why it could be felt to be (deliberately) incomplete.
Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte
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If I am in any way right, the point may be missed because of the more frequent contrasts that are made between S4 and S5 but in many respects the nature of S5 written during WW2 drives home his musical approaches to war for the war years. It isn't as if S4 was written in 1943. It can also be missed in that obviously S3 comes between S2 and S4.
Without wishing to be too lyrical or flowery, that organic rising from the loam which I described in an earlier post with reference to Leith Hill. There is undoubtedly the conveying of very raw human emotion in the music with that rural impressionism. It seems to me to be a mixture of majesty without any pomp and a kind of heartbreak that is overcome. It is like the spirit of life itself. It tears and it bleeds and it wrenches and yet in doing all those things it feels indomitable and celebratory. It is all humankind as the earth and plants. I think one could talk of birth - or rebirth - and growth as well as resurrection or perhaps, better, revival. And, in a sense, contrast with "The Lark Ascending" which is "of the air".
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