Walford Davies Symphony 2 at EMF

[Alan Howe]

I note that Walford Davies' Symphony No. 2 in G (1911) is to be performed at the English Music Festival this year - at Dorchester Abbey on 24th May. The orchestra is the BBC Concert Orchestra under Martin Yates.

A recording must surely be in the offing...

[Gareth Vaughan]

One certainly hopes so. I intend to be at that concert. Lewis Foreman is giving a pre-concert talk about the early MSS of Vaughan Williams and Walford Davies. Should be interesting. Lewis is very keen to get Walford Davies' orchestral music on disk.

[Jimfin]

This is excellent news! There's so little Walford Davies on record. I loved the Dutton recordings of 'Everyman' and the violin sonata.

[Mark Thomas]

A fascinating prospect.

[Gareth Vaughan]

The problem with WD is that most of his orchestral music remains in MS...   though, at least, it remains - in the collections of the RCM.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks. Very good news indeed.

[semloh]

Yes, very welcome news. I will be totally honest and admit that I only him through the RAF March past!

By the way, shouldn't this thread be in the section on "New Recordings and Broadcasts"? 

[Alan Howe]

Well, the thread started off as a concert announcement. Perhaps we should wait until the CD is officially announced before posting in the other section...?

[Alan Howe]

From The Musical Times, April 1911:

The prospective programmes of the London Symphony Orchestra announce that the first of the season's concerts which Herr Nikisch will conduct on May 15th will include the production of a new symphony by Dr. H. Walford Davies. This is not the composer's first work of the kind, for as long ago as 1895 Manns brought out his first Symphony at the Crystal Palace, and it was one of the earliest works which drew public attention to Walford Davies' compositions. It, however, aroused interest more or less as a promising student's work. Nine years later Everyman made the composer generally known to the larger musical public, and even since Everyman his style and especially his command of the orchestra has matured considerably. Two works since that time have shown him working in the direction of symphonic form: Lift up your hearts, produced at Hereford, 1906, which is actually a symphony with chorus, and the Festal Overture, which is almost a symphony in miniature.

The symphony (Op.32) which Herr Nikisch will conduct is in G major: it has four movements, each one of which is complete in itself and detached, but there is strong thematic connection between the first and last movements. The bold theme of the slow introduction (Largo maestoso) with which the Symphony opens is the most important of the various features which give unity to the work. A progression of three chords (G major, C minor and E minor) is characteristic of the theme, and a stately rhythmic figure founded upon these is given out at once by the strings and horns (f), while drums and basses reiterate the key-note with a persistent tread. The idea is fully dealt with and passed through several phases before it gives way to the Allegro.  One smooth, almost ecclesiastical version of it is heard on the strings, another more agitated and plaintive development follows, so that it is quite evident that the greatest importance is attached to it – in fact, that it is one of the principal characters of the drama. The Allegro fervente is brought in by a rushing upward scale-passage which leads to a strong and impulsive subject. The most striking characteristic of the ardent movement which it introduced is the amount of musical material which plays a part in it. The ordinary divisions of first and second subject are scarcely applicable, though the ideas roughly fall into two groups, and one rich and exuberant tune in D major stands out with special prominence. It, like the theme of the introduction, extends its influence into the last movement. The plan of increasing the members of the 'cast', so to speak, of a symphony is one with which composers have been busy in experiment ever since Beethoven. This work offers some remarkable instances of the modifying effect upon the subsequent form of the whole movement which a large number of clearly contrasted ideas must bring. In the first place the part technically known as the exposition takes up an unusually large proportion of the first movement, and this entails considerable compression afterwards. Development and recapitulation are largely carried on at the same time, the themes being amplified and extended as they are passed again in review. The introductory theme takes an impressive place in the development, and its presence always introduced a more contemplative attitude of mind, stilling the energetic impulse of the themes belonging to the first subject-group and contrasting with the frank happiness of those in the second group. It grows stronger and more or less takes possession of the coda.

A slow movement (Lento espressivo) in B flat major opens with a sonorous cadence figure which seems to bear some relationship to the introductory theme of the first movement; it clears away and gives place to a serene melody which is the principal theme of the movement, and which when it is expanded recalls some passages in Everyman such as the Song of Knowledge. The resemblance is probably quite fortuitous, but it is mentioned to suggest the prevailing mood of the slow movement, which has a more strenuous, agitated middle section.

A purely delightful and unfettered Romanze, Allegro felice (D major) takes the place of a Scherzo and is lightly scored for small orchestra (strings, woodwind, horns and harp). One happy tune springs out of another simply and naturally, the form seems to make itself, and the whole atmosphere is as light-hearted and spring-like as anything could possibly be. This mood passes quickly, and the Finale is preluded by a short episode in which the oboe broods over a plaintive melody added above sustained chords played by a quartet of violioncellos. This seems less of an introduction to the Finale than a delay purposely introduced to check the feeling produced by the Romanza. Soon the chief theme of the Finale, a marching tune in G minor, sweeps away the brooding introduction, and from henceforward the course of the Symphony is scarcely clouded at all. As in the first movement so in the Finale there is a great wealth of thematic material, but the tunes here seem less contrasted and more closely related. Indeed the chief second subject, a tune which quite carries one away by its spirit, is so closely connected with the first that it seems like a sublimated major version of it. As the movement nears the end, the ideas become more closely associated. The main introductory theme, the first of the whole Symphony, is heard in direct contradiction to the most merry of the Finale tunes, and in the Coda the various melodies jostle one another much as do those in the Quodlibet of the Festal Overture, and the Symphony ends in a mood of the utmost exhilaration.

I gather, however, that the planned performance conducted by Nikisch came to nothing. What a pity!

[Mark Thomas]

Something to look forward to, judging by that report.

[Alan Howe]

Alan, are you sure it wasn't April 1911

Duly amended.

[Alan Howe]

Did anyone happen to attend the concert with Walford Davies' Symphony No.2?

[Alan Howe]

Here's some good news from Rob Barnett at MusicWeb:

Walford Davies's forty minute four movement Symphony No.2 in G major rises from silence with a glorious density of texture and refulgence. It is, in the heroically uproarious, whoopingly surging first movement, several shades Elgarian. Indeed it was premiered in the same year as the first performance of Elgar 2 which served to obliterate its reputation – that and the Great War. Never mind: the first movement has real symphonic fibre, grandeur and weight of utterance. The second movement swings sweetly along at allegretto taking on a patina of Binge and Dvorak along the way. Occasionally it reminds me of its contemporary: Elgar 2. It's a very attractive episode. The third movement has a clearer kinship with the first though its tenor is pensive rather than thrawn and once or twice it did meander. However it ended with some masterfully modest poetic writing. The finale turns unequivocally to the essence of the first and picks up a little of the joyous baggage of Brahms 4. Yates and the BBCCO irresistibly kindled a real surging conflagration in the last five minutes.

As with all the works last night Yates and his orchestra brought splendid excitement and lyric tension, swing and bounce to what was played. That's an extraordinary thing given the unfamiliarity of the music...

...It's good news that the concert has been recorded and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 sometime in June this year.

http://www.seenandheard-international.com/2013/05/26/english-music-triumphant-in-premiere-and-revival-at-dorchester-on-thames/

So: let's keep an eye out for the broadcast!

[Gareth Vaughan]

I had hoped to be at the concert but, very sadly, was prevented by family reasons from attending. I look forward to the BBC broadcast.

[Alan Howe]

...and I was simply too busy to go. Hope all is well, Gareth.