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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Much English music of the 1930s is easy to dismiss as behind the times, in that it ignores the dkitats of Second Viennese School's musical equivalent of lacerations by barbed wire. (And non the worse for the omission.)
Moeran's sound world is very similar to that of Arnold Bax: lush, Celtic, and hugely influenced by Sibelius.
But his music is much more taut, more symphonic, than Bax's seven prolix works of the same genre.
In this recording, Moeran music is fortunate to get the best. Vernon Handley, as you would expect, is completely inside the music, and confirms this symphony as a neglected masterpiece.
Moeron benefits for the usual top-drawer Chandos recording.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
I will start with the performance, which is as fine as you could wish from Handley and the orchestra. The sound quality is very impressive and serves the symphony very well. I will concentrate here on the symphony because as pleasant as the other works are they are not of the same stature.
The symphony carries very strong traces of Sibelius, Vaughan Williams and a little more modern bite in the Walton mode. Moeran incorporates a fair amount of folk like material both English and Irish in style.
It is a finely constructed symphony and while the influences on the work are clear, Moeran has a very distinctive musical personality. The opening allegro switches between reflective and more urgently driven passages giving a generally usettled mood. The following slow movement is the true heart of the work full of aching melancholy and solitude.
The scherzo is more chipper and breezy without being particularly cheerful. The finale that follows seems to take quite consciously elements from Sibelius' Fourth symphony and Tapiola. The animated early part does little to hide the underlying bleakness and comes to a surprising conclusion. The sense of the material petering out is very similar to the Sibelius Fourth but this time the work ends with a bang - uncompromisingly grim and strident; the stabbing finale chords are a conscious and trenchant echo of the closing bars fo Sibelius' Fifth but this time with bitterness and anger.
So whilst this symphony has much attractive and folksy material it isn't soft or easy listening. The darkness lurking beneath until the final bars is no mere poetic melancholy. Add to this a firm grip of symphonic structure and fine orchestration this symphony compares very favourably with the best Vaughan Williams symphonies and Walton's first. Lovers of English symphonic music doubtless know this work well. For those wishing to explore the best of English music it's a must.
The symphony carries very strong traces of Sibelius, Vaughan Williams and a little more modern bite in the Walton mode. Moeran incorporates a fair amount of folk like material both English and Irish in style.
It is a finely constructed symphony and while the influences on the work are clear, Moeran has a very distinctive musical personality. The opening allegro switches between reflective and more urgently driven passages giving a generally usettled mood. The following slow movement is the true heart of the work full of aching melancholy and solitude.
The scherzo is more chipper and breezy without being particularly cheerful. The finale that follows seems to take quite consciously elements from Sibelius' Fourth symphony and Tapiola. The animated early part does little to hide the underlying bleakness and comes to a surprising conclusion. The sense of the material petering out is very similar to the Sibelius Fourth but this time the work ends with a bang - uncompromisingly grim and strident; the stabbing finale chords are a conscious and trenchant echo of the closing bars fo Sibelius' Fifth but this time with bitterness and anger.
So whilst this symphony has much attractive and folksy material it isn't soft or easy listening. The darkness lurking beneath until the final bars is no mere poetic melancholy. Add to this a firm grip of symphonic structure and fine orchestration this symphony compares very favourably with the best Vaughan Williams symphonies and Walton's first. Lovers of English symphonic music doubtless know this work well. For those wishing to explore the best of English music it's a must.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
The stature of Moeran's Symphony in G Minor is evident from the number of recordings it has received, beginning as early as 1942 with Leslie Heward's interpretation. Today we have those of Boult (Lyrita), Lloyd-Jones (Naxos) and Handley (Chandos) to choose from. Although each of these has its merits, I have decided to review the last of these because the late (and sadly missed) Vernon Handley had a reputation for interpreting the music of Moeran (as well as of Bax), and was the complete professional whose study of the scores are known to have been meticulous, leaving nothing to chance. Interestingly, Handley himself spoke very highly of the Heward recording.
Moeran, a slow developer, was unable to fulfil Sir Hamilton Harty's 1926 commission for a symphony because he felt he still lacked the necessary technique. It was 1937 before the work finally emerged, and although dedicated to Harty, it was premiered by Lesie Heward the following year. Much - perhaps too much -has been made of Moeran's "influences". Certainly, there is an Englishness suggestive of Vaughan Williams, and there are folksong inflections, although Moeran rarely quotes folksong directly. Sibelius is the one influence that is generally agreed upon; this is evident in the way in which the themes in the Symphony tend to grow (rather like Moeran's own technique, perhaps!).However, this should not be seen as detrimental in any way. Sibelius stood like a colossus over British music in the 1930s, and whatever else can be said, Moeran always retains a distinctive style.
An influence of a different kind which permeates all of Moeran's music is the British landscape - especially that of Norfolk and Kerry in the west of Ireland, both of which he knew and loved. He admits that much of the work was conceived "among the mountains and seaboard of County Kerry", while the brooding Lento grew out of the "sand dunes and marshes of East Norfolk". The Symphony occasionally bursts out with passages of a skipping, jig-like quality, perhaps evoking, like the second movement of the later Violin Concerto, the atmosphere of the Puck Fairs held in Kerry; but the conclusion, after a moment of relfective calm, is terse and explosive.
This Chandos disc generously couples the Symphony with two slighter, but nonetheless characteristic works: the Rhapsody for Piano and orchestra (in which Margaret Fingerhut puts in a sympathetic perfomance), and the Overture for a Masque, both highly enjoyable. But it is the Symphony that dominates. The fact that it managed to hold its own, despite being written during the same period as Vaughan Williams Fourth, Walton's First, and Bax's Sixth, says it all.
Moeran, a slow developer, was unable to fulfil Sir Hamilton Harty's 1926 commission for a symphony because he felt he still lacked the necessary technique. It was 1937 before the work finally emerged, and although dedicated to Harty, it was premiered by Lesie Heward the following year. Much - perhaps too much -has been made of Moeran's "influences". Certainly, there is an Englishness suggestive of Vaughan Williams, and there are folksong inflections, although Moeran rarely quotes folksong directly. Sibelius is the one influence that is generally agreed upon; this is evident in the way in which the themes in the Symphony tend to grow (rather like Moeran's own technique, perhaps!).However, this should not be seen as detrimental in any way. Sibelius stood like a colossus over British music in the 1930s, and whatever else can be said, Moeran always retains a distinctive style.
An influence of a different kind which permeates all of Moeran's music is the British landscape - especially that of Norfolk and Kerry in the west of Ireland, both of which he knew and loved. He admits that much of the work was conceived "among the mountains and seaboard of County Kerry", while the brooding Lento grew out of the "sand dunes and marshes of East Norfolk". The Symphony occasionally bursts out with passages of a skipping, jig-like quality, perhaps evoking, like the second movement of the later Violin Concerto, the atmosphere of the Puck Fairs held in Kerry; but the conclusion, after a moment of relfective calm, is terse and explosive.
This Chandos disc generously couples the Symphony with two slighter, but nonetheless characteristic works: the Rhapsody for Piano and orchestra (in which Margaret Fingerhut puts in a sympathetic perfomance), and the Overture for a Masque, both highly enjoyable. But it is the Symphony that dominates. The fact that it managed to hold its own, despite being written during the same period as Vaughan Williams Fourth, Walton's First, and Bax's Sixth, says it all.
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