Brian: Symphony No 2; Festival Fanfare

Advantages: Very exciting and powerful piece of emotional hysteria
Disadvantages: If you're obsessed with classical form and beauty, then this might just be too much

...on that sea until it encompasses you and drowns you in its depths." The motto that opens the symphony is set as a forceful F minor fanfare which is repeated several times (it has been suggested that the fanfare was inspired by the Book of Revelations). The ensuing Moderato con anima begins as a staggering waltz in 9/8 time with a fluid swirl of downward melodic curves. A marked feature of this movement is that Tchaikovsky refuses to return to the main key of F minor until the very end when the Fate motto returns for the fourth time. Along the way Tchaikovsky posts harmonic reference points throughout the movement making key relations not all that important. Even in the recapitulation Tchaikovsky doesn't return to F minor, as is the usual practice, but instead goes to D minor, a key that has not even been hinted at before. And when F minor finally... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: Romantic, passionate and beautiful
Disadvantages: Unless you have a heart of stone absolutely none whatsoever

...symphony: the yearning phrase is taken up by various solo instruments, beginning with horn, and followed by violin, oboe and flute, while the the violins gently support the melody with the motto theme. This lovely and intimate passage now proves to be a transition back to the clarinet-led melody, only this time it is presented by the violins. The woodwinds decorate this theme with the yearning melody and these themes, as well as the motto theme, bringing the movement to a gentle and quiet close. IV. Allegro vivace The Finale opens with whooping good-humor, now in E major. Here Rachmaninov unleashes unbridled festivity, but soon thinks better of it and descends into a jaunty, hushed march. This interlude is soon over and we return back to the celebratory music, that soon yields to another Rachmaninov "big tune", one of his finest ever... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful

Advantages: The idee fixe. Unique and contrasting.
Disadvantages: None whatsoever.

...a different episode of his relationship with Harriet. He completed the symphony in 1830. He provided a detailed programme for the symphony with a synopsis. An artist "who sees for the first time a woman who realises the ideal of beauty and fasination that his heart has so long invoked, and falls madly in love with her". 1st Movement: Dreams / Passions. A slow introction recalls the emptiness before he met his beloved. The music leads into an obsessive love theme. The beloved is represent by an "idee fixe", a theme that recurs throughout the symphony. Berlioz wrote that this movement was to represent "frenzied passion with all its bursts of tenderness, jealousy, rage, alarm etc". 2nd Movement: A Ball. This is a delightful waltz using multiple harps.It is graceful to start but becomes more hectic as the music progresses. The "idee fixe" emerges... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful