Previous listens to this symphony on my part (highly enjoyable nevertheless) have progressed in total ignorance of its professed programme; perhaps, in light of it, the work will provide an ideal soundtrack in mid-June, when I will travel to Assynt in the NW Highlands with the chief purpose of climbing the suitably vertiginous Suilven…!
Perhaps i overstated it in my article, Chris, but i really don’t think the programme, such as it is, for Langgaard’s symphony is essential. He certainly doesn’t explore it in the highly specific, detailed way that Strauss does in the Alpensinfonie. But when you know the inspiration, coupled with the movement titles, i think it does add an extra interpretative element to the way the music behaves, because (as i’ve mentioned) it’s far from straightforward, particularly the hiatuses in the finale.
Not overstated at all, and I agree that the work mostly makes perfect sense without it, but equally that it helps to explain some of the more puzzling passages. However, I was only joking about that Suilven soundtrack – headphones are a no-no when I’m communing with the mountainside! (Which isn’t to say that the oddest selection of musical loops don’t impinge on my consciousness in extremis, because they frequently do, but that’s a different matter entirely…)
UPDATE: just having another listen now (the DNSO/Dausgaard recording); I don’t think I’d clocked before how pervasive the influence of Tchaikovsky is, particularly in the first movement! But then again, Langgaard’s age when writing it is surely the age when many fall under that composer’s spell (I certainly did back then!), and of course at that time he wasn’t long-deceased.
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Previous listens to this symphony on my part (highly enjoyable nevertheless) have progressed in total ignorance of its professed programme; perhaps, in light of it, the work will provide an ideal soundtrack in mid-June, when I will travel to Assynt in the NW Highlands with the chief purpose of climbing the suitably vertiginous Suilven…!
Perhaps i overstated it in my article, Chris, but i really don’t think the programme, such as it is, for Langgaard’s symphony is essential. He certainly doesn’t explore it in the highly specific, detailed way that Strauss does in the Alpensinfonie. But when you know the inspiration, coupled with the movement titles, i think it does add an extra interpretative element to the way the music behaves, because (as i’ve mentioned) it’s far from straightforward, particularly the hiatuses in the finale.
Not overstated at all, and I agree that the work mostly makes perfect sense without it, but equally that it helps to explain some of the more puzzling passages. However, I was only joking about that Suilven soundtrack – headphones are a no-no when I’m communing with the mountainside! (Which isn’t to say that the oddest selection of musical loops don’t impinge on my consciousness in extremis, because they frequently do, but that’s a different matter entirely…)
UPDATE: just having another listen now (the DNSO/Dausgaard recording); I don’t think I’d clocked before how pervasive the influence of Tchaikovsky is, particularly in the first movement! But then again, Langgaard’s age when writing it is surely the age when many fall under that composer’s spell (I certainly did back then!), and of course at that time he wasn’t long-deceased.