three or four symphonies

Towards the end of last week I had two concerts, featuring music by a total of four composers: 19C Johannes Brahms and Franz Berwald, and 20C, both Polish, Karol Szymanowski and Witold Lutoslawski. It's interesting that all four of these composers wrote four symphonies each. But I didn't hear four symphonies.

First concert was the first of two weeks of Herbert Blomstedt's annual return visit to SFS. He led Brahms's Third, which is evolving into his most respected symphony, and Berwald's First or "Sérieuse." Some may ask, who is Berwald? I wondered the same thing when I first saw his name on a chapter of the 1967 Penguin Books symposium on the symphony, one of the books that taught me the repertoire. Most of the chapters were on individual composers, and they were arranged chronologically by birth, so the first four were Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven ... and Berwald. Clearly this was someone I'd better learn about. But only 2 of his 4 symphonies, including the "Sérieuse," were then available on disc, on an LP from Nonesuch, the discount oddities label. I bought it and was delighted with what I heard: beautiful and thrillingly inventive. I still count him as the outstanding "unknown" 19C post-classical symphonist. Years later, when Blomstedt was SFS music director, he also recorded with them 2 of the 4 Berwalds, including the "Sérieuse." A shame he didn't get around to the other two, though he's been known to conduct at least one of those elsewhere. I have the SFS CD too, as well as a complete set from elsewhere. Here's Blomstedt in the "Sérieuse" with another orchestra. Notice in particular the immensely dramatic crescendos at the beginning.

Thursday's performance struck me as rather more crabbed than the recordings, but it was still well-done and an outstandingly rare opportunity to hear Berwald live. Interesting, too, is that, though Berwald and Brahms use almost exactly the same orchestra, their dispositions are so different. Berwald makes much more use of the brass than Brahms, while Brahms is much more generous to the winds.

Friday it was to Bing to review a visit by the Wroclaw Philharmonic, from Poland with a conductor from Central America and a solo violinist from Korea. It wasn't yet announced what they were going to play when I signed up for this review, so in a sense it was potluck. We got one German symphony, the Brahms First, plus an overture and a concerto by the two Polish composers, all excellently played. I'd been scratching my head over recordings and a score of the Szymanowski concerto all week, but it clicked nicely in concert.

I struck up conversation with my neighbors before the concert, and sure enough one pointed to the name Szymanowski in the program and said, "How do you pronounce that?" So I did. Remember that "Sz" is in Polish essentially what English represents by "Sh" and that their "w" is approximately our "v" with leanings towards "f" and that should help.