Egon Wellesz came to
England after the Anschluss, the annexation
of Austria by Nazi Germany on 9 March
1938, and it was as a refugee from Nazism
that he spent ten years in Oxford during
the Second World War and after. I remember
the composer Edmund Rubbra’s gentle
smile as he told me about the Wellesz
he met at Oxford, who while a very pleasant
and urbane colleague clearly believed
himself, as a composer, a member of
a higher musical culture. Indeed, in
reviewing a work such as Wellesz’s Second
Symphony one is reminded of the clash
of cultures which is revealed on checking
the Wellesz files at the BBC Written
Archive Centre at Caversham – I was
fascinated to be able to put this first
recording of Wellesz’s Second into context
by seeing how the music was received
by the BBC in August 1949, particularly
as the (to Wellesz un-named) assessors
included some of the leading British
symphonic composers of the day.
Edmund Rubbra found
it to be ‘A powerful work written by
a master-craftsman. The idiom is a very
accessible one, yet the composer manages
to say some vital things with it. It
should certainly be performed.’ William
Alwyn was not so keen. ‘This is a scholarly
work – erudite, rather than musical.
The slow movement owes much to Mahler
(as indeed does the scherzo) but it
lacks the fire & inspiration of
that composer. The scoring is generally
competent without showing any original
flair for orchestration. In construction
the work is thoroughly grounded on Brahms.
I cannot recommend it with any enthusiasm.’
Lennox Berkeley was not sympathetic
to the idiom but recognised its achievement.
‘I don’t care very much for this – to
me it is ponderous and rather conventional.
However, that is a matter of personal
taste - technically it is exceedingly
well done, and full of sincerely and
well-expressed feeling. I think it should
be broadcast.’ Later, after a performance
in 1951, the BBC’s Maurice Johnstone
reported: ‘I heard two thirds of it.
Long-winded, pretentious, dull, unoriginal
romantic music. Craft and orchestration
not more than competent – I do not think
it will take root.’ From the perspective
of 2004 I cannot share his response,
and it is interesting that fifty years
on it is Maurice Johnstone’s own music
that has failed to last. (Though very
different, of course, Johnstone’s music
is not without merit either.)
So how does the recording
stand up, on hearing the symphony over
fifty years later? The four movement
Second Symphony is certainly an approachable
and immediately involving piece, from
the first movement’s Brucknerian opening
to its Mahlerian second subject, and
its tuneful scherzo, slow movement and
finale. Yet for me it is ultimately
an unfulfilling work which never seems
to draw the sum of its glorious parts
to a satisfying conclusion. I have delayed
filing this review feeling I must be
wrong about this, but after a couple
of months’ acquaintance I still find
myself responding in the same way. What
is not in doubt is that you should certainly
hear it and make up your own mind, for
there is much to admire, even love.
I had previously known
the music from a truly terrible-sounding
tape of a BBC performance in the early
1950s (probably BBCSO/Boult 4 December
1951) where the movement that stood
out was the catchy, bucolic Scherzo,
almost a ländler, and with its
folk-dance like trio tune accompanied
by a repeated motif, very much an Austrian
celebration on returning to the country.
The lyrical lines of the slow movement,
supposedly deriving from an English
folk song, but also sounding to this
Brit very Austrian, is a heart-warming
wide-spanning invention spun out to
over ten minutes. Here one can well
imagine Wellesz’s purpose was not dissimilar
to Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen,
hymning a culture smashed by the war.
Writing about Wellesz’s first three
symphonies, Hans Redlich perhaps sensed
this when he wrote in The Listener:
‘Wellesz composes his symphonies within
the limits of a living tradition, occasionally
using thematic material and harmonic
processes of his forerunners with legitimate
pride and a subtle understanding of
their untapped possibilities. Wellesz
composes these symphonies with the .
. . sincerity of an Austrian for whom
the sonorous symbols of classical symphony
have retained their full spiritual value
and their technical relevancy.’ Indeed
in a letter to Alec Robertson at the
BBC Wellesz stated he was taking up
‘the line abandoned by Schubert’. Incidentally,
while the symphony is called The
English, as I have suggested
there is nothing English about it other
than its celebration of Wellesz’s adopted
country; this is surely a Viennese emigré’s
song of homesickness after the horrors
and dissolution of war.
The finale contains
some of the most memorable invention,
the opening idea reminiscent of a similar
one in the finale of Wellesz’s better-known
Octet of 1949; and when the strings
suddenly dominate the orchestra, abruptly
launching into the repeat of the lyrical
second subject, we experience one of
those heart-stoppingly delicious moments
which CD allows one to repeat ad
nauseam once one has caught the
bug. And yet for me, over all it is
the least satisfactory movement of the
whole work, its many faceted world seeming
to stop and start unconvincingly.
The three movement
Ninth Symphony is a much tougher nut
to crack, the first movement deriving
from a four note series and its connection
with Viennese tradition being, for a
celebrated pupil of Schoenberg, a much
later one than its companion on the
CD. What a pity that CPO did not take
us through the Wellesz symphonies in
chronological order, rather than what
seems like mixing the bon-bons with
the castor oil. There is an enormous
potential audience for the first four,
possibly a rather smaller one for the
more recondite later ones.
And yet the Ninth Symphony
is a remarkable score and has its own
rewards – the sound is more luminous
thanks to Wellesz’s scoring in points
of colour, and the gaunt lines and abrasive
dissonance evoke a drama, intense and
threatening which grips from the outset.
This music, I suspect, is much more
difficult for the orchestra than the
earlier symphony, but the Vienna Radio
Symphony Orchestra certainly rise to
the challenge, with playing of poise
and intensity. The short elusive slow
movement is very much an interlude in
the drama before we reach the finale.
Here the pointillism is more integral
to the invention, its oppressive climax
underlining that this is no resolution.
In the finale (the
longest of the three movements) a ubiquitous
motif based on a simple descending second
provides a unifying element and in fact
ends the symphony. This is a deeply-felt
tragic adagio, at the outset the long
lines devoid of warmth, though vastly
expressive, lead through a bleak musical
landscape. This is no warmly reflective
vision of old age, but an austere and
rigorous exploration of the material
both musically and emotionally. It is
given added force for us by the knowledge
that soon afterwards Wellesz suffered
the stroke which ended his composing
career, leaving him paralysed. This
is indeed a striking 23 minute score
but one far removed from the lyricism
of the earlier symphony on this CD which
is self-recommending. The whole is well
played and recorded: I look forward
to the third volume of Gottfried Rabl’s
sympathetic and long overdue championship
of Wellesz’s symphonies on CPO with
impatience, when presumably we will
have either the First or Third Symphony.
Lewis Foreman
Radio Symphonieorchester Wien/Gottfried Rabl 