Călin Humă Symphony Concerto f. Piano and Orchestra, Symphony No. 1 'Carpatica'

[semloh]

I don't much like either work. They seem to me to pander to the popular taste for undemanding, episodic music that moves rapidly between explicit melodrama and cloying sentimentality, with little overall structure or rationale. That's how I hear it, and it's not to my taste.

[dhibbard]

OK  It is starting to remind me of the "stick" of gum music...  wonderful the first 4 minutes and then the taste goes away and you spit it out after 10 minutes.

[Alan Howe]

It seems that Mr Humă is self-taught. Nothing wrong in that, I suppose, but this sounds like the work of an amateur to me. Am I being too harsh? Please correct me if I'm wrong...

[FBerwald]

Not wrong.! If indeed he is self taught, the colours in the Piano Concerto especially is fantastic. That being said the main problem I feel is (like many have pointed out) the rhapsodic nature - The themes (not too individual to begin with) are not developed enough. There are beautiful moments but the structure and direction of a good symphony or even sonata form is lacking so after a few minutes the listener is a bit lost. It's not bad music, just misnamed I feel.

[Alan Howe]

It's not bad music, just misnamed I feel

My feeling exactly. So evidently I'm not the only stick-in-the-mud here...

[Gareth Vaughan]

I think that, unless you have had some rigorous musical training there can be a tendency to write beautiful themes (or textures) but be unable to develop them convincingly or integrate sections one into the other so that the material develops seamlessly or a new theme sounds inevitable. Again, I return to my music teacher's comments on some of my student attempts at composition: "It's too bitty - too many ideas, not developed." I think the PC is far better than anything I wrote as a student of course, but you see my point... (I hope).

[Mark Thomas]

I certainly do, and I agree with it completely as regards these two pieces by Humă - especially the Symphony-Concerto. As serious works to sit down and focus on they fail, but as pleasant background music to "have on" whilst doing something else (wallpaper if you like, but that's a pejorative term) they're fine by me.

[Alan Howe]

It's the titles that stick in my craw...

[Mark Thomas]

Can't say that worries me too much. Symphonies haven't been four movement sonata-form based for many years now, if they ever were totally, although I agree that the use of the term still sets up expectations which clearly aren't met in these cases.

[FBerwald]

Leave it. It's the composer's prerogative no matter how misguided. Let's discuss other works by composers we are curious about - Eg. (and Alan can start a different thread  ) Schmidt-Kowalski - I'd love to hear his unrecorded symphonies and concertos.