Chorales in symphonic music

[Crescendo]

often, when the dark clouds in a symphonic piece part and a chorale comes through it makes for a very special moment.
in this sense i am looking for things i have not heard before to add to my collection.

let me start with a few examples:
Magnard - Symphony No. 4
Peterson-Berger - Chorale & Fugue (Doomsday Prophecies)
Melartin - Symphony No. 4

i am sure there are much more out there... thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[dafrieze]

Do you mean the Magnard Symphony No. 3?  The Bruckner-like chorale in the last two minutes of that piece is guaranteed to lift you off the earth (metaphorically speaking).

[Lionel Harrsion]

What an interesting topic - I can only begin to imagine the extent of head-scratching underway amongst the gang on this one!  An example that comes to my mind is in the Variations Symphonique for cello and orchestra by Leon Boëllmann.  I have a wonderful LP recording of this by Tortellier but I don't think it's made it onto CD (I'll be very glad to be corrected on that if anyone knows better).  Boëllmann is one of those who's 'sung' only by the occasional organist but, apart from these variations, his chamber music is well worth investigating too.

[febnyc]

The Fourth Symphony of Joly Braga Santos has a brilliant chorale in the final movement.

[edurban]

There's nothing more stirring, imo, than the chorale in the last movement of John Knowles Paine's Symphony no. 2.  And you get to enjoy it alot because it comes thundering back at least three times.  Of course Victor Yellin used to say, "It's not a chorale, it's a good old-fashioned New England hymn tune..."

David

[albion]

Two works which come replete with organ, and in which a big tune takes on the function of a chorale in the final movement - from the 'sung' end of the spectrum, Saint-Saens' Symphony No.3 (guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of the neck in a really great performance), and from the 'unsung' Stanford's Symphony No.5.

[jerfilm]

Speaking of organ, the final movement of Guilmant's 1st symphony for organ and orchestra is my all time favorite.  There are a couple of interesting concert performances of it on YouTube.  Unlike most of the commercial CDs recorded in cavernous cathedrals which wipe out most of Guilmant's orchestration, these two performances are clear and distinct and reveal things you might not know existed.....

I ramble.

Jerry

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Franz Schmidt, Second Symphony.

[albion]

Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony (No.5), Op.107 (1830) makes splendid and stirring use of Eine feste Burg ist unser Gott, as does Raff in his Overture, Op.127 (1854) named after the chorale.

[eschiss1]

No longer or perhaps never terribly unsung, but quite "Romantic" in many important ways- the chorale-variations that conclude Berg's violin concerto. These inspired some examples by others also, I think (I gather Hartmann's Concerto Funèbre- which I first heard 20-plus years ago but still haven't heard very often - has a chorale as one of its movements ; and other works more obviously.)
Probably going to be at least a very "chorale-like" moment in many a work by composers influenced by Bruckner. I think I hear such things in the symphonies of Wetz and Hermann (no.2 in B minor, first movement).

[chill319]

Dohnanyi's Symphony 2 is, IMO, a major work. The finale comprises a set of variations on Bach's chorale "Komm, süsser Tod, Komm..."

On a side note, the way Copland uses his Fanfare for the Common Man at the end of his Symphony 3 has something in common with the way many post-Bruckner symphonists used chorales.

[J.Z. Herrenberg]

Copland got mentioned and I just remembered Roy Harris' Third Symphony. It's grand peroration at the end, with Brahmsian timpani beats (think opening First Symphony), is fundamentally a chorale, too, though carried mainly by the strings.

[Hofrat]

Joachim Raff:

Symphony no. 9 "Im Summer" 4th movement

[DaveF]

Hindemith's Mathis der Maler symphony has at least two: one in the slow intro to the first movement ("Es sungen drei Engel", the score says) and one right at the end of the finale ("ALLELUIA").

And two which probably aren't real chorales at all:

The Schnittke concerto for piano and strings features a wonderfully luminous Russian-Orthodox sounding passage which appears twice, on both occasions being hacked to pieces by the soloist with fists and forearms;

Valen's violin concerto ends with a beautifully restrained chorale-like passage for full-ish orchestra.

DF