Exploring Bach's B Minor Mass

The story of the discovery and resurrection of Britten’s Double Concerto for Violin and Viola is one of those rare musicological moments that can capture the interest of even the casual music lover. Britten had started composing it as a very young man but never quite finished it, even though the work had progressed quite far. So, it was only after his death that the premiere took place, in 1997. Unlike that work, the Violin Concerto, Op. 15 found itself immediately thrust onto the world’s musical stage, its genesis having been rather straightforward, if hardly smooth. Britten had left Great Britain before the outbreak of World War II in Europe and so he composed it in Canada and the US.

If one is searching for an extra-musical heading under which to bracket the con- tent of the Symphonies Nos. 4, 5 & 6 by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one cannot really avoid the word “fate”. Personal fate, to be exact. Thus his Symphony No. 4 (1876-78) was a frank confession straight from the soul, a subtle psychological portrait printed on paper. In a letter to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, he talked of “fate, this disastrous power, which prevents our urgent desire for happiness from achieving its objective”. After this, a further 11 years passed before Tchaikovsky attempted to compose another “purely” symphonic work – his Symphony No. 5.

Having struck pay dirt with another of its exhumations, Georg Schumann—see review of his piano trios in 35: 5—CPO, label of the Long Lost Composers Society—here resurrects Schumann’s Symphony in B Minor and his Serenade, op. 34. Georg Alfred Schumann (1866–1952) is yet another composer that can be added to the list of blue-ribbon winners produced under Carl Reinecke’s tutelage at the Leipzig Conservatory, and the term “blue-ribbon” is not used metaphorically. In 1886, still a student at the conservatory, Schumann composed this B-Minor Symphony, and when he entered it in an orchestral composition competition two years later it took first prize out of 57 entries.