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Old 07-17-2013, 08:15 PM   #155 (permalink)
CanwllCorfe
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Originally Posted by Bacholyte View Post
Three favorites come to mind:

Symphonic Dances, by Rachmaninoff. My favorite movement is the second. The image it suggests to me: imagine that someone you're madly in love with has recently died, and one night returns as a ghost to dance with you. The combination of voluptuousness and spookiness is unique.

Symphony "Ilya Mourometz", by Reinhold Gliere. Inspired by a Russian epic or legend, it's a showpiece of heart-on-sleeve emotion and orchestration. In places I'm reminded of Wagner's Liebestod. Of the two LP recordings I have, you might expect that the Philadelphia Orchestra would be unrivaled for this music, but the sweep of the Russian recording makes them sound like a toy by comparison.

Symphony no. 6, by Vaughan Williams. Oh, that gentle pastoral composer, you're probably thinking. But it was composed in the wake of World War II. After having given audiences a bit of a jolt with his fourth symphony, his fifth had been more back to normal. When the premiere of the sixth approached, people speculated whether it would be in his typical style like the fifth, or more violent like the fourth. Well, in short, at the conclusion of the performance even the latter group sat stunned. Deryck Cook in The Language of Music described the effect before devoting a chapter to a detailed analysis. Clearly this scholar/critic considered it a really important piece of music. I'll just have to promise you that the first three movements kick butt-- the second is downright terrifying-- while the last is an evocation of sheer bleakness in a pianissimo whisper, dying away to "niente" (nothing). It's war followed by nuclear winter, or so many people continue to believe even though the composer denied it. Can't fathom why this symphony isn't better known.
Thank you! I will definitely check all of these out.
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