Don't get me wrong. It was a pleasant enough piece, but it just didn't do anything for me. It was nothing interesting, intriguing, or memorable.
I had the opposite reaction this week. It wasn't long after the start of Louise Farrenc's C minor symphony that I thought to myself, "Hmm...this is interesting" -- and my interest held and even heightened as the piece played on. The symphony is written in four movements: 1. Andante Sostenuto -- Allegro 2. Adagio Cantabile 3. Minuetto Moderato 4. Allegro Assai The first movement opens with quiet, pulsing chords in the strings, and then a solo clarinet introduces a warm and supple line that is later shared with other woodwinds. Soon, though, the allegro section propels the movement forward, and one review I read compared the work to something by Schumann and "to me, prefigures some of the lyricism and drama of Tchaikovsky." I thought of another composer though -- the lyrical and fiery movement reminded me of the overture Felix Mendelssohn wrote for Victor Hugo's play "Ruy Blas." The pastoral second movement is much more serene than the taut opening movement. The third movement -- marked "Minuetto Moderato -- is nothing dainty as one might expect from a minuet. Instead, it is much more determined and deliberate. The final movement returns to the more urgent tempo from the symphony's opening. One review I read stated nicely, "This is a perfectly iconic Romantic era sound, and ends with sufficient magnitude." Farrenc's symphony hooked me from the start and held my interest though the entire piece. I loved it.
0 Comments
|
A New Hope:As the header above says, each week I will listen to a piece of classical music that I've never heard before, and then I will report out what I thought about it. Archives
September 2023
Categories
All
|