Roger Sessions: Symphony No. 1 (1927): Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, Akeo Watanabe, No. 2 (1946): New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos, No. 3 (1957): Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Igor Buketoff. CRI CD 573 (1990) 090438057325
Symphony No. 2 recorded 16.I.1950 at 30th Street Studios
Symphony No. 1 recorded 1961 or before
Symphony No. 3 recorded ca. 1968
The Symphony Schoenberg Never Composed
Originally posted on Amazon.com, 7 November 2007
His two Chamber Symphonies notwithstanding, Schoenberg never composed a symphony in the accepted sense (although the 5 pieces opus 16 and Variations opus 31 are great orchestral compositions in their own right), so we can be grateful that Sessions did in his stead. It did take the American composer three symphonies to warm up to it, as testified by the present disc.
Don’t take this as a sneer. While I find the Schoenbergisms striking, all the way to the twists and turns of orchestration, Sessions’ Third Symphony is a great work, dramatic and powerful, magnificently orchestrated, full of ear-catching musical events. Schoenberg would have no reason to blush had he composed it himself.
For the rest, the disc offers a fascinating presentation of the composer’s evolution to his Schoenbergian self, starting with the early and, to my ears, not really characteristic First (1927). It is full of things Roy Harris might have composed, from the menacing and triumphant, pre-Bernstein bouncy brassy statements of the beginning to the second, lyrical theme of the first movement with the plangeant tone of english horn and oboe (2:47), and the “Scotch”-souding theme which opens the sarcastic finale, which at times also seems strongly indebted to Stravinsky’s Petrushka. To me the most embarrassing is the pastoral and dreamy second movement, with its tritely sentimental oboe-clarinet and wailing violin melodies. But granted, the Symphony was written five years before Harris’ great first statement (the Symphony 1933 – Harris had abandonned an earlier essay begun in the mid-twenties, and his Symphony “American Portrait” is from two years after Sessions’ First), and it is a tribute to Sesssions that this was his point of departure, not of arrival.
In the almost twenty ensuing years, Sessions matured tremendously. The Second Symphony (1946) is a work of great power, thorny, angular, highly dissonant. In it I hear echoes of Berg’s Wozzeck (try at 2:55 in the first movement) and, in the short Scherzo (2nd movement) and some passages of the finale (after 2:20), traces of Bartok, in particular the sardonic scherzo passages of Miraculous Mandarin or Concerto for orchestra. The powerful forward drive of the finale harks back to the earlier Sessions, but it is more angular and dark.
But the most remarkable thing I find is that, though the wailing violin then oboe are there again (at 1:40 in the first movement, and in the slow one), the effect is absolutely not sentimental, but rather evocative of a lost soul (some of Henze’s early works come to mind). This is possibly because it is integreated in an architecture and a language that are not sentimental – or maybe because of the way the New Yorkers under Mitropoulos’ baton phrase it: I don’t get the same feeling with Herbert Blomstedt (on Decca 443 376-2 barcode 028944337624, with John Harbison’s Oboe Concerto and Second Symphony). The emotional heart of the Symphony is its slow “Adagio tranquillo ed espressivo” (3rd movement), a threnody for Franklin Roosevelt, who had died a few months earlier. There, the intense, atonal lyricism of Berg and, already, Schoenberg, looms large, together with their art of chamber-like orchestration. There weren’t many orchestral works as original as this Symphony to be composed in those years – maybe Elliott Carter‘s Symphony (on CRI CD 552 with works of Francis Thorne and Nicolas Roussakis, link will open new tab to my review), and some works of Wallingford Riegger (see my reviews of CRI CD 572 and First Edition Music FECD-0007). In general, what makes the Second and Third Symphonies works of enduring interest is not only their wealth of ideas, but also that (unlike the First, and so many other American symphonies written in those years – and still today), they never resort to the most immediately easily graspable and immediately appealing solutions.
This well-filled CRI disc (74:22) collates recordings from various dates – and regrettably CRI doesn’t provide them. The First came out before 1961 on CRI 131 with William Bergsma’s “Music on a Quiet Theme” and Russell Smith’s “Tetrameron”. It has some tape hiss but clear, stero sound. Mitropoulos’ recording was awarded the 1949 Walter Naumburg Foundation award and came out in 1950, both on 78rmp and on LP – that’s how old it is. The authoritative Discography of the New York Philharmonic by James H. North dates the recording January 16, 1950. I don’t have the score so the following comment is gut feeling more than fully informed appreciation, but unlike the previous reviewers I tend to prefer it to the more recent Blomstedt/San Francisco. The latter’s sonics are evidently very superior, more spacious (in tempo as well), smooth and comfortable, but I find that the very rawness of Mitropoulos and the New Yorkers suits the music well, and for all its harshness and lack of depth the mono sound has more presence (Blomstedt’s orchestra is so spaciously recorded as to sound somewhat distant). The Third Symphony came out in 1968 on RCA LSC-3095 with Benjamin Lees’ Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra.
This is an essential disc for the admirer of Sessions, and anyone interested in the history of the American symphony. For more reviews of Sessions and especially his 4th to 9th Symphonies, see my Sessions presentation page.