Emánuel Moór - Symphony No.5

[Reverie]

Here is my realisation of Emánuel Moór's 5th symphony in A minor, Op.53B (1901)

The work is unpublished and obviously unperformed.

The movements are as follows:

1. Allegro moderato (Maestoso)

2. Adagio

3. Scherzo - presto

4. Allegro moderato

The last page has this note after the final bar: Hotel Fürstenhof, Frankfurt 10th January 1901


LINK:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMZ-oD9OLPk

[Alan Howe]

Marvellous, Martin! All work on Moór's music is to be very warmly welcomed. Please excuse my minor adjustment to the spelling of the composer's name.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Many thanks indeed for this work, Martin. I enjoyed your realisation very much. It is an accomplished work, though not IMHO a particularly distinguished one. It has some attractive orchestration, but is short on memorable melodic content. Nevertheless, as I said, a most enjoyable listen - and I have a feeling my initial impression may improve on further hearings. I am extremely grateful to have been given, through you, an opportunity to hear this symphony. As Alan says, all work on Moor's music is always exceedingly welcome.

[Alan Howe]

As usual with Moór's music there's a lot 'going on', which I find fascinating. I echo Gareth's comments about the ultimate memorability of the material, but then I'm only on my first listen and I'm sure more will be revealed on subsequent auditions. My suspicion is that Moór's style became more austere with time, but that may just be a feature of this symphony.

Just to recap, these are the composer's symphonies:

No.1 in E minor, no opus no. (1893) - MS
No.2 in C major 'In Memoriam Ludwig Kossuth', no opus no. (1895) - Simrock
No.3 in D minor, Op.44B (1895) - pub. Rozsavölgyi
No.4 in B flat, no opus no. (1898) - Schmid
No.5 in A minor, Op.53B (1901) - unpub.
No.6 in E minor, Op.65 (1906) - pub. Siegel
No.7 in C major, Op.67 (1906) - pub. Siegel
Pensées Symphoniques, Op.75 (1908) - pub. Mathot
No.8 in A minor, Op.92 (1910) - unpub.

[eschiss1]

Opening is promising, will hear the whole thing hopefully this evening- looking forward to it. Is anyone willing to make mp3s available, does Rêverie have issues with that though? What he does have is my thanks as a fan...

[Ilja]

This symphony, marked Op. 53b, follows a Cello Sonata Op. 53, also in A minor. I have not compared them extensively, but they obviously share some material (and some movement titles). That original may also go some way to explain the austerity that Alan speaks of.

Around 1900, a very active period of composition started for Móor, particularly of orchestral works, with four further symphonies (when including Pensées Symphoniques, 1906-1910), the 2nd Cello Concerto in C sharp minor (1906), the 3rd Violin Concerto in E minor (1906), the Cello Double Concerto in D major (1907), and the Triple Concerto in E minor (1907). No fewer than 39 opus numbers separate the 5th symphony of 1901 from the 8th of 1910. While that's an impressive rate of production, many of the works from this period feel eerily similar. Moór's range of orchestral expression wasn't the broadest, I'd say (he's a bit like Smetana in that regard), and while it's always solid I feel myself drawn more to his earlier repertoire, which seems not quite as routine as the pieces from this period.

[eschiss1]

Looking again at that worklist, I'm suddenly intrigued by the question of whether or not any of his operas will ever receive modern production, and what they're like (including a 2-act setting of Sawitri, WoO 160, that I am going to guess is not much like Holst's- assuming the subject's even the same.)

[Alan Howe]

I'd say that was a fairly distant possibility. We don't even have a commercial recording of any of his symphonies.

[tpaloj]

It's a wonderful treat to hear this symphony, or at any rate, any of the symphonies by Moór. Thank you, Martin!

Purely on musical terms, after a first listen I can't say I enjoyed it to the fullest... it's a little fatigued by uninteresting material, promising better music than it tends to want to develop.

Did you photograph the manuscript yourself? If so, I can appreciate the extra lengths you went to produce this reproduction.

We don't even have a commercial recording of any of his symphonies.

I wonder why that's the case. Atrocious. Are the performing materials perhaps difficult to source?

[Ilja]

Some time ago, I posted the second symphony on the Downloads board. I think that is a wonderful work: jubilant (there's really no other word for it), with great melodies and development, which help it to sustain its 45 minutes without much issue. It's also quite a good recording (for a radio dub).

From his later works (the batch from the 1900s), I think I prefer the Triple Concerto in D minor from 1907, deals relatively well with the intrinsic issues of the genre. The Second Cello Concerto in D major from the same year is fine as well, but it seems that Moór listened rather too closely to Dvorak's Second Cello Concerto.

[Alan Howe]

Ilja is right: Symphony No.2 is an extremely attractive work and should be recorded commercially.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Are the performing materials perhaps difficult to source?

Not at all. Scores and parts of the Symphony No. 2 "Kossuth" in C major and Symphony in D minor, Op. 45, together with the Pensees Symphoniques are in Fleisher. MS scores (and, in some cases parts) of most of the other symphonies are held in the Emanuel Moor archive in Westminster Central Music Library in London (although only a small part of the archive has been catalogued, and the uncatalogued music may be difficult to access). The only problematic symphony is (I think) No. 7 because I'm not sure where a full score can be found and the set of parts, which is all they have at Westminster, is lacking the all important 1st violin part!
However, the Henrik and Emanuel Moor Stiftung has a score of the Symphony No. 6 in E minor.

[Gareth Vaughan]

In 2021 I wrote this in reply to an enquiry by Eric:

"The majority of Moor's mss are held by the Westminster Music Library, but they are not catalogued. I would need to visit the basement again (and I haven't been there for over 12 years) and go through the drawers to see what they actually have. There is a handwritten list of the archive, but my recollection is that a few of the items are missing (or not in the boxes they are supposed to be in). The following symphonies are listed: "Symphony No. 7 in C (full score), Symphony in D min (full score), Symphony No 5 (score & parts), Symphony in A minor (score & parts) [not sure if this is No. 8 or another copy of No. 5 - both are in A minor], Symphony in D min Op 44 (sic) (score & Parts), Symphony No 4 (ms score), Symphony No 6 [no details], Symphony No 1 (ms Score)". Additionally, in the main music catalogue (i.e. separate from the Moor archive) they have listed the printed Full Score and Parts of No. 7 in C, Op. 67*.

The Emanuel und Henrik Moor Stiftung lists full scores of the following symphonies: Symphony in D minor, Op. 45 (1896), pub. Rozsavölgyi; Symphony No. 6 in E minor, Op. 65 (1906), pub. Siegel; and Symphony in C, WoO. 153 (1895), pub. Simrock - this is the one dedicated to Lajos Kossuth, and of which there is a performance on YouTube which has been discussed on this forum.

As you know, Fleisher has score and parts of the D minor, Op. 45 (i.e. No. 3) and the C major, WoO. 153 (i.e. No. 2) which they have wrongly catalogued as the Op. 67 Symphony in C.

That's all I can tell you about Moor's symphonies."

*Since then we have discovered that Westminster does NOT have a full score of No. 7, only the deficient set of parts mentioned above.

[Alan Howe]

I wonder whether the Budapest radio performance of No.2 could be used for a commercial recording?

[eschiss1]

Sibley Library (& IMSLP) -also- have full scores of the Kossuth symphony (no.2 in C) and the E minor symphony (no.6) published in 1906.  Also, MPH has republished these 2 symphonies recently (2017 and 2020).
(Also- all these listings for no.7 that turn out to be holdings of no.2 in the same key, and it turns out that the only actual no.7 is an incomplete set of parts. I wish that the Debrecen, Liszt Ferenc Academy, or Széchényi Libraries had larger Moór collections...)

Edit: Liszt Ferenc does have the D minor symphony, anyway, I should note. "Symphonie in d moll, [für Orchester] [Moór]", 114 page score...