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]
Rubbra revised the scoring of the Symphony in 1945, 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]
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]