Symphony No. 2 (Rubbra)

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The Symphony No. 2 in D, op. 45, by Edmund Rubbra was composed between February and November 1937 and dedicated to Sir Adrian Boult, who conducted the first performance, broadcast on 16 December 1938. [1] [2] Boult had previously conducted the premiere of Rubbra's First Symphony just 20 months earlier. [3]

Contents

Rubbra revised the scoring of the Symphony in 1946, reducing the requirement for triple woodwind down to double. [4] He also made cuts to the first movement and revised the ending to finish in D major, somewhat clarifying the symphony's ambiguous tonality: the original version began in D minor and ended in Eb major. [5] [6] The new version was first performed at Cheltenham in 1946, with the composer conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. [4]

There are four movements:

I Lento rubato. "A movement where the development never ceases". [7]

II Scherzo: Vivace assai. Alternating time signatures (9/8, 15/8), musical battle between C major and C# minor. [7]

III Adagio tranquillo. "One of the most introspective [movements] in all Rubbra's music". [7]

IV Rondo: Allegretto amabile - Coda: Presto. "Predominantly a happy movement [that] must be played with great lilt by a virtuoso orchestra to be the convincing coda to the experiences of the whole symphony". [7]

Style

Robert Matthew-Walker points to the originality of the work's language and form: "linear composition [where] everything in the work grows from the very first idea, announced at once [by the strings] in unison, and without a clear tonality". [5] Schaarwächter calls this Rubbra's 'germinal' technique, "in which the entire material of a movement, or even of the whole of a symphony...is derived from a bud or germ". [8]

Rubbra himself styled this symphony "more asture and contrapuntal" than his first. But he also regarded his first four symphonies as a set. "When symphonies are written in quick succession, the characteristics of each are usually the result of a reaction away from its predecessor....although they are independent works they are somehow different facets of one thought, and a knowledge of all is necessary to a complete understanding of one". [9]

Recordings

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References

  1. ↑ Radio Times, Issue 793, 11 December 1938, p. 70
  2. ↑ 'Edmund Rubbra's Second Symphony: A Note by the Composer', in Tempo, No. 1 (January 1939), p. 8
  3. ↑ Arthur Hutchings. 'Edmund Rubbra's Second Symphony', in Music & Letters, Vol. 20, No. 4 (October 1939), pp. 374-380
  4. 1 2 Jürgen Schaarwächter. Two Centuries of British Symphonism (2015), p. 986
  5. 1 2 Robert Matthew-Walker. Notes to SOMM CD0179 (2018)
  6. ↑ Schaarwächter (2015), p. 736
  7. 1 2 3 4 Vernon Handley. Notes to Lyrita SRCD 235 (1992)
  8. ↑ Schaarwächter (2015), p. 738
  9. ↑ Edmund Rubbra, February 1949, quoted in Leo Black. Edmund Rubbra: Symphonist (2008), pp. 42-3
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