Residentie Orchestra The Hague – 400 Years of Dutch Music Vol. 8 (1992)

Symphony No. 5 is widely considered as the finest among the nine numbered symphonies of Anton Bruckner, and ranks among his most famous works.
In their first recording on Chandos for almost ten years, the Residentie Orchestra The Hague here performs the work under its chief conductor, Neeme Järvi, who has conducted the symphony with orchestras across the globe, and is recognised as one of the key interpreters of it.

Richard Hol (1824-1904) was a leading figure in Dutch music during the 19th century. The son of an Amsterdam milkman, he graduated from the Royal Music School in 1844 and went on to become a nationally famous composer, conductor, organist, pianist, and teacher. Hol composed a large body of choral and vocal music, an opera, and a comparatively small number of orchestral works, including four symphonies. Both symphonies on this disc bear the influence of mid-19th-century German composers (particularly Schumann and Mendelssohn), but Hol’s own voice is readily discernible.

Chandos’ Dutch music series continues with this second disc of Hol symphonies. As with Symphonies 1 and 3, Nos. 2 and 4 display Hol’s mastery of symphonic form, orchestration, and counterpoint. They also reveal the prevailing influence of Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms (with occasional suggestions of Dvorák). Mendelssohn figures most in Symphony No. 2, with an opening movement that rides along like many of the German composer’s tempestuous allegros, followed by a fleet-footed and colorful scherzo. Symphony No. 4 begins with a slow introduction before launching into the driving allegro proper. There’s energy aplenty in the following scherzo and much tender emotion in the adagio. The finale, like that of the Second Symphony, creates a festive atmosphere based on folk-dance rhythms.

After Tchaikovsky, but with Glazunov, and before Stravinsky and the rest, Nikolai Tcherepnin (1873-1945) made a not so quiet contribution to the continuing development of the Russian ballet. But he was quite an overshadowed figure, in large part due to the success of Stravinsky & his son, Alexander Tcherepnin and to modernist trends that became prevalent by the early Twentieth Century (Nikolay’s music remains rooted in the sound-worlds and mannerisms of Tchaikovsky, Massenet, and Faure). But the language of "Narcisse et Echo" (1911) and telling subtleties in its orchestral resources point to Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe" written a year later.

The Dutch are way too hard on themselves. So far, Chandos has released three discs (including this one) in its ongoing Dutch composers series featuring the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, and all three have been excellent. And yet, the writer of the booklet notes treats this music as if listening to it were some kind of penance. He should take a lesson from his English colleagues, who indiscriminately promote any piece of native trash as God’s gift to the world of music. Well, maybe he needn’t go quite that far.

It is good to welcome this set of the extravagantly brooding orchestral music of the Dutch composer Alphons Diepenbrock.

Dutch composer Matthijs Vermeulen’s wildly complex and inventive music resists easy classification, and yet it does not really do his work justice to say it is an amalgam of Berg, Varèse, Ives, Hartmann, Pettersson, and others. But in effect that is just what it is–an inscrutable, polymelodic kitchen-sink approach to composition. And it is no less fascinating as a result. At once relentless, frantic, fierce, and desolate, Vermeulen’s compositions were barely performed during his own lifetime (1888-1967), and he did not help his cause by systematically estranging himself from the musical establishment (Mengelberg, among others).

Chandos’ first disc of orchestral music by Cornelis Dopper was very enjoyable, but this is better still. The Third Symphony, subtitled “Rembrandt” (apparently for no particular reason), enjoys the virtue of brevity. Composed in 1904/05, its opening may remind listeners of Elgar, and it’s every bit as good: stately, a bit foursquare, rich strings backed by harp. However, once the allegro gets going there’s no looking back as Bamert and his orchestra attack the music with unbridled gusto. The Andante features some gorgeous writing for solo winds backed by harp; the scherzo is an earthy sort of country dance; and the finale, though it ends triumphantly, spends most of its time exploring surprisingly delicate, nocturnal moods, with particularly Romantic soft brass fanfares echoing through the texture. It’s all over in 29 very pleasant minutes.

Schubert composed his first five symphonies while still a teenager, but they represent just one facet of his prodigious fluency. At this time some of his musical ideas bear a family resemblance to certain themes from Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, but already his own musical character is evident. He began his Second Symphony in December 1814 and had finished it by March 24th of the following year. He completed the Fourth Symphony in about three to four weeks during April 1816. We should not read too much into the Fourth Symphonys Tragic appendage, added by Schubert as an afterthought. It may be merely an example of the flippant comments which he wrote on some of his youthful scores, but nevertheless the symphony has more gravitas than its predecessors. Schubert also includes a second pair of horns to enrich the texture. Actually, this is the only piece of non-programmatic music to which he gave a descriptive title. After completing the symphonic cycles of Beethoven and Mendelssohn, Jan Willem de Vriend now undertakes Schuberts complete symphonic output. This is the first volume in that series.