The Forgotten Symphony

MACA CLASSICS SERIES

Friday 23 & Saturday 24 August 2024, 7.30pm

Perth Concert Hall

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West Australian Symphony Orchestra respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and Elders of Country throughout Western Australia, and the Whadjuk Noongar people on whose lands we work and share music.

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The Forgotten Symphony

This concert is dedicated to the memory of Emeritus Musician and former Principal Viola of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, John Dean.

Claude DEBUSSY Prélude à ‘L’après-midi d’un faune’ (10 mins)

Samuel BARBER Violin Concerto (25 mins)
Allegro
Andante
Presto in moto perpetuo

Interval (25 mins)

César FRANCK Symphony in D minor (41 mins)
Lento – Allegro non troppo
Allegretto
Allegro non troppo

Asher Fisch conductor
Karen Gomyo violin

Asher Fisch appears courtesy of Wesfarmers Arts.

Wesfarmers Arts Pre-concert Talk
Find out more about the music in the concert with this week’s speaker, Philip Everall. The Pre-concert Talk will take place at 6.45pm at the Terrace Level Corner Stage.

Wesfarmers Arts Post-concert Talk (Saturday Only)
Join soloist Karen Gomyo for a postconcert interview immediately following the performance in the Terrace level foyer. Uncover more about the music and hear insights into the performance experience.

Listen to WASO
This performance is recorded for broadcast Wednesday 23 October, 1pm (AWST) on ABC Classic. Date subject to change. For further details visit abc.net.au/classic

Vale John Dean

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WASO is saddened by the passing of Emeritus Musician, John Dean. John was a valued colleague and much-loved member of WASO for 33 years.

Following in the footsteps of his father Horace Dean (WASO violinist from 1942 to his retirement in 1969), John joined the Orchestra in the violin section before moving to the viola section when a permanent position became available in 1956. He held the position of Principal Viola from 1970 to 1989 and appeared as a soloist with WASO on several occasions, including a performance of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy. John’s wife, soprano Margot Robertson, also performed as soloist with WASO on numerous occasions.

John was a member of the Oriel String Quartet (the first West Australian group to tour the Eastern States for Musica Viva), a founding member of both the Perth Chamber Soloists and the Australian String Teacher’s Association, a tutor at the University of Western Australia, and an AMEB examiner.

John’s legacy is continued by his daughter Amanda, who has been playing as a casual percussionist with WASO since the 1980s.

Photo: John Dean (front right), 1967, in ABC Studio 620.

Did you know?

Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun is a musical evocation of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem “Afternoon of a Faun,” in which a faun—a half-man, half-goat creature of ancient Greek legend—awakes to revel in sensuous memories of forest nymphs.

Prélude à ‘L’après-midi d’un faune’ was a big turning point in music. Debussy stretched the traditional system of keys and tonalities to their limits.

Barber's concerto was commissioned for Iso Briselli, a prodigy violinist who graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music the same year as Barber.

The last decade of Franck's life was perhaps his most creative, producing seven major chamber works, two symphonic poems, an oratorio and beginning two operas, in addition to the Symphony in D minor.

WASO On Stage

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About the Artists

About the Artists

About the Music

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About the Music

About the Music

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César Franck
(1822-1890)

Symphony in D minor

Lento – Allegro non troppo
Allegretto
Allegro non troppo

In France in the 1860s and 1870s, composers seemed compelled to respond to the challenges of the ‘New German School’ of Wagner and Liszt, but, for the most part, were equally compelled not to ‘sound German’. Perhaps the most original response was contained in the small but distinct output of the Belgian-born composer César Franck.

The D minor Symphony is one of a handful of works from the last years of Franck’s life on which his reputation rests. The personality this music reveals is one influenced by Beethoven’s concentration of expression, Wagner’s orchestral texture and harmonic colours, and the time-scale of Wagner’s music dramas. It is also influenced by many years in the organ loft, and by the freedom from formal sonata procedures Liszt had advocated in his symphonic poems, in particular Liszt’s method of structural development which he called ‘transformation of themes’, in which a work’s overall structure is determined by the major points of change to its principal themes.

Franck welds these potentially contradictory elements into something unique and big-hearted in this symphony. Like Beethoven, his principal motifs are often short, and he is able to transform these germ-like ideas with power and success. Like Beethoven, too, he has no time for elaborate introductions – in each movement of this symphony he plunges almost straight into the argument at hand – and his codas do not meander.

But the results are not at all Beethovenian, because Franck’s sense of scale is so spacious. He is inclined to parade his good ideas in emphatic review so that, for example, the slow introduction to the symphony becomes a kind of motto theme for the first movement as it progresses. And his final, elaborate recapitulation in the finale is not the work of a man in a hurry. This epic style of utterance was also a result of his re-examination of traditional formal procedures, by which process he took Beethoven’s notion of ‘the symphony as personal testament’ further into the heart of Romantic feeling.

In effect, this symphony’s dark first three notes are the basis of all that follows. They are the first movement’s main, anchoring theme, and they establish the movement of the semitone as a governing factor in the whole work. Indeed, the notion of thematic inter-relatedness is more closely observed in this work than in any of Liszt’s symphonic poems. It is one of the symphony’s most innovative characteristics, and it delighted some
of Franck’s contemporaries. The young Claude Debussy’s response was: ‘[The symphony] is amazing. I should prefer a less four-square structure. But what smart ideas!’

One of the smartest manifestations of the work’s concentration of thought is the combination of slow movement and scherzo into one movement. As Donald Tovey wrote of the Allegretto, ‘It has the allure of a slow minuet; but by using the harmony of the cor anglais tune and – simplest of all means – halving its note values, Franck creates a contrasting, quicker set of themes that eventually coalesce with the stately tune that opened the movement.’

Franck presents his ideas with such skill that it is easy to miss the ease with which he moves between keys. Before the first 30 bars of the symphony are through, Franck has shifted from his home key of D minor through F sharp minor to E flat. When the work was new, this was another aspect of it that offended conservative taste. His melodic ideas, as already noted, are not so freewheeling, and are often dependent on the movement upwards or downwards of the semitone, a characteristic which, in the words of French music specialist Martin Cooper, ‘suggests the action of the organist’s fingers or feet executing a sliding semi-tonal descent on the keys or pedals’.

Franck’s symphony was influential: the symphonies of Dukas and Chausson are based closely on its shape and variations of mood, and the language of Debussy’s Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun was clearly informed by the lusciousness of Franck’s juicier moments. But after World War I, when the European avant-garde had no taste for expressions of Romantic aspiration, the work receded from view. It only established its modern reputation gradually, from the 1940s, and was restored to favour with the help of the long-playing record.

Abridged from Phillip Sametz © 1993

First performance: 17 February 1889. Jules Garcin, conductor.

First WASO performance: 27 May 1944. Ernest J. Roberts, conductor.

Most recent WASO performance: 2-3 September 2011. Asher Fisch, conductor.

Instrumentation: two each of flutes and oboes, one English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, one tuba, timpani, harp and strings.

Glossary

Coda – a concluding section added to the basic structure of a piece or movement to emphasise the sense of finality.
Minuet – a dance in triple time, which became popular in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term is now used to refer to a dance-like piece or movement in moderately fast triple time. Recapitulation – a return to the opening material of a piece or a movement.
Scherzo – literally, a joke; the term generally refers to a movement in a fast, light triple time which may involve whimsical, startling or playful elements.
Semitone – a very narrow interval. The first notes of Beethoven’s Für Elise are a semitone apart. Sonata – nowadays, a work (usually in three or four movements, of which the first is usually in sonata form) for solo instrument, usually with piano accompaniment (unless the solo instrument is the piano). In the 16th and 17th centuries, the term (which literally means ‘sounded’ or ‘played’) referred more generally to various types of instrumental music.
Symphonic poem – a programmatic work for orchestra, usually in a single movement.

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