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The Symphony No. 8, Op. 124 by Malcolm Arnold was finished in November 1978.
| This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(August 2007) |
The Symphony No. 8, Op. 124 by Malcolm Arnold was finished in November 1978.
The work was commissioned by the Rustam K. Kermani Foundation and given its first performance on 5 May 1979 in Troy, New York, with the Albany Symphony Orchestra conducted by Julius Hegyi. It is the only Arnold symphony to have had its premiere outside the United Kingdom.
The work was written after Arnold had lived in Ireland for a few years, and it prominently features an Irish march. The march is a rare example of Arnold re-using his earlier material: it originated from his score to the film "The Reckoning" (1969).
Shortly after writing this work, Arnold lapsed into a seven-year musical silence during which he was hospitalised and treated for depression. The work seems to reflect some of the bleakness in Arnold's life at the time.
The symphony is in three movements:
I. Allegro
The movement begins with a discordant martial flourish. A simple marching tune emerges on piccolo and harp, against a disquieting backdrop of dissonant strings. This develops over the course of the movement, which ends quietly and uncertainly with an almost inaudible tam-tam stroke.
II. Andantino
An elegiac movement, which ends in a mood of hushed regret.
III. Vivace
The final movement opens with a slightly crazed upbeat character, in the vein of Arnold's lighter orchestral pieces. The string fugato section is reminiscent of the style of Shostakovich (who had died in the meantime, since the composition of Arnold's previous symphony), but this mood is contrasted by the return of the movement's opening theme in a cocktail-lounge percussive style. The symphony closes with confidence.
The symphony is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, snare drum, tam-tam, glockenspiel, vibraphone, harp and strings.
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114 is one of the best-known compositions by the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. Commissioned by Paul Sacher to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the chamber orchestra Basler Kammerorchester, the score is dated September 7, 1936.
The Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Op. 47, by Dmitri Shostakovich is a work for orchestra composed between April and July 1937. Its first performance was on November 21, 1937, in Leningrad by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky. The premiere was a "triumphal success" that appealed to both the public and official critics, receiving an ovation that lasted well over half an hour.
The Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54 by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1939, and first performed in Leningrad on 21 November 1939 by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky.
Symphony No. 3 was Aaron Copland's final symphony. It was written between 1944 and 1946, and its first performance took place on October 18, 1946 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing under Serge Koussevitzky. If the early Dance Symphony is included in the count, it is actually Copland's fourth symphony.
A London Symphony is the second symphony composed by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The work is sometimes referred to as Symphony No. 2, though the composer did not designate that name for the work. First performed in 1914, the original score of this four-movement symphony was lost and subsequently reconstructed. Vaughan Williams continued revisions of the work into its final definitive form, which was published in 1936.
The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, Op. 34, is a 1945 musical composition by Benjamin Britten with a subtitle Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell. It was based on the second movement, "Rondeau", of the Abdelazer suite. It was originally commissioned for the British educational documentary film called Instruments of the Orchestra released on 29 November 1946, directed by Muir Mathieson and featuring the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent; Sargent also conducted the concert première on 15 October 1946 with the Liverpool Philharmonic in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, England.
English Dances, Op. 27 and 33, are two sets of light music pieces, composed for orchestra by Malcolm Arnold in 1950 and 1951. Each set consists of four dances inspired by, although not based upon, country folk tunes and dances. Each movement is denoted by the tempo marking, as the individual movements are untitled.
Sergei Rachmaninoff composed his Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 44 between 1935 and 1936. The Third Symphony is considered a transitional work in Rachmaninoff's output. In melodic outline and rhythm it is his most expressively Russian symphony, particularly in the dance rhythms of the finale. What was groundbreaking in this symphony was its greater economy of utterance compared to its two predecessors. This sparer style, first apparent in the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, enhances the emotional power of the work.
The Symphony No. 6, Op. 95 by Malcolm Arnold was written in 1967, and finished in July of that year. It is in three movements:
The Symphony No. 2 in E minor and C major by Arnold Bax was completed in 1926, after he had worked on it for two years. It was dedicated to Serge Koussevitzky, who conducted the first two performances of the work on 13 and 14 December 1929.
The Symphony No. 3 by Arnold Bax was completed in 1929. It was dedicated to Sir Henry Wood and is perhaps the most performed and most immediately approachable of Bax's symphonies.
The Wooden Prince, Op. 13, Sz. 60, is a one-act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók in 1914–1916 to a scenario by Béla Balázs. It was first performed at the Budapest Opera on 12 May 1917 under the conductor Egisto Tango.
The Symphony No. 7 by Arnold Bax was completed in 1939 and dedicated to "The People of America". The work received its first performance in Carnegie Hall, New York City, by the New York Philharmonic on 10 June 1939 under the baton of Sir Adrian Boult. It was commissioned by the British Council to be played at the 1939 New York World's Fair, along with Arthur Bliss's Piano Concerto in B-flat, and Ralph Vaughan Williams' Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus.
The Symphony No. 4, Op. 71 by Malcolm Arnold was finished on 13 July 1960. It is in four movements:
The Symphony No. 7, Op. 113 by Malcolm Arnold was finished in 1973. It is in three movements:
The Symphony No. 9, Op. 128 by Malcolm Arnold was finished in 1986. It is in four movements:
The Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists and Orchestra is a double timpani concerto written by Philip Glass in 2000. It is paired with the Cello Concerto on Vol. I of Glass' Concerto Project, a set of eight concerti by the composer. A typical performance of the work lasts 25–28 minutes. It was written for Jonathan Haas and later recorded by Evelyn Glennie, and was premiered by Haas and Svet Stoyanov with the American Symphony Orchestra in Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, conducted by Leon Botstein. The work was commissioned jointly by the American Symphony Orchestra, the Peabody Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony and the Phoenix Symphony. In 2004, a transcription for wind ensemble was written by Mark Lortz, which debuted at Peabody Institute in 2005.
Foreign Bodies is an orchestral composition in three movements by the Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. The work was commissioned by the Finnish Broadcasting Company and was first performed at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival on August 12, 2001 by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste.
Métaboles is an orchestral work by Henri Dutilleux, commissioned by the conductor George Szell in 1959 to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra. Métaboles was composed in 1963–64 and was first performed by Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra on 14 January 1965.
Shadows, Op. 52, is an orchestral prelude by the Finnish composer Aulis Sallinen, who wrote the piece in 1982 on commission from the National Symphony Orchestra Association. The prelude's thematic material is closely related to Act III of Sallinen's third opera, The King Goes Forth to France, on which he also was at work in 1982, writing Shadows upon completion of Act II of the opera. Nevertheless, the composer has emphasized that Shadows is "an entirely independent orchestral work", albeit one whose "lyrical and dramatic ingredients reflect the philosophy of the opera". The National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) premiered the work on 30 November 1982 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., under the direction of its music director, Mstislav Rostropovich. Shadows so impressed Rostropovich and his orchestra that the NSO requested Sallinen compose a symphony for them, the result of which would be the Fifth (1985).
