Sunday 1 December 2019

German Romantic Symphonies # 1: Gernsheim Symphony # 2

Blame it all on Hans von Bülow.

The famous German conductor, pianist, journalist, and composer took up the phrase of "the Three Bs" originally coined by Peter Cornelius, and changed it from Bach-Beethoven-Berlioz to Bach-Beethoven-Brahms.

Added to the fulsome praise of such music critics as Eduard Hanslick, this was enough to elevate Johannes Brahms to the pinnacle of the "conservative" wing in Romantic musical circles.  His supposed primacy acted as a powerful stimulus to slowly but surely drive other German Romantic composers out of sight and out of mind.

The music of Friedrich Gernsheim suffered under a dual additional handicap.  His work was specifically (and unfavourably) compared to the music of Brahms.  Worst of all, since he was born of Jewish parentage, his music was actively suppressed and destroyed during the Nazi regime, under the brutally abrupt label of entartete Musik ("degenerate music").  In recent years, the balance has begun to be redressed, with a few recordings now available, including cycles of his four symphonies.

I haven't heard any of those recordings yet, but I did have the good fortune to hear Gernsheim's Symphony No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 46 at a concert of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra last week.  A sizable array of microphones hung above the stage at the Centre in the Square -- perhaps a recording will be forthcoming?  We can always hope!

The symphony impressed me as a work of considerable skill and interest -- much more so than some of the other long-lost orchestral music of the period which I have heard.  Although pre-concert talks made much of the resemblance of Gernsheim's music to that of Brahms, I found that any similarity was more superficial than actual.  Details to follow.

One aspect of Gernsheim's orchestration stood out for me: his habit of separating the wind/brass group from the strings, and having either one or the other playing alone.  To me, this was an immediate signal pointing the way to the similarly divergent handling of the orchestra by Mahler (although the resemblance stops right there).  Mahler may well have become familiar with Gernsheim's music as a young man.  But that's not the whole story.  There are numerous passages where selected winds and/or brasses are felicitously combined with portions of the string body.  Gernsheim's handling of the orchestra is both skillful and imaginative.

The most impressive aspect of the symphony is Gernsheim's skill in creating substantial melodies and then developing them along the lines of classical symphonic procedure.  Only the finale was a bit lacking in this respect.

The first movement opens with a sombre theme on horns, perhaps the most Brahmsian moment of the entire score.  This is taken up by the winds and quickly built up to the entrance of the main theme in an unusual 6/8, allegro tranquillo, a tempo direction which aptly describes the entire movement.  It contains great melodic riches and no shortage of fascinating cross-rhythmic games, yet says its say (like the entire work) in a very punctual way -- no longueurs here.  That choice of the 6/8 time signature, by the way, also refers us back to the similar time in the opening movement of the Brahms First although the character of this music is very different indeed.

The second movement is a brief but energetic tarantella, showcasing the agility and nimble fingers of both winds and strings to great effect.  A brief fugal interlude shows promise of becoming a trio, but it's a false alarm as the main tarantella theme quickly resumes its course and brings the movement swiftly to an end.

The slow movement, Notturno, has a definite Mediterranean air to it as well, a feeling of warm summer nights in Italy which actually sits well with the Germanic style of the work as a whole.  Here, too, the material is worked through with real skill in the instrumentation.  It should come as no surprise, given the punctuality of the symphony as a whole, but nonetheless I was almost startled to realize that we were building up to the entry of the finale, and that Gernsheim followed the precedent of Beethoven 5 and Schumann 4 by linking these movements together.

The finale opens with an obvious gesture of homage to the Brahms First, itself a similar homage to the Joy theme of Beethoven's Ninth.  The similarity goes so far as having the violins and violas play their theme on their lower strings, imitating even the sound of the Brahms.  Complimentary it may be, but this movement is also for me the weak link of the symphony as a whole.

The truth is that Gernsheim here becomes a victim of the "finale problem" which bedevilled all the Romantic composers of symphonies.  Faced with the titanic precedent of Beethoven, especially in his Fifth, Seventh, and Ninth symphonies, composers from Schubert and Schumann to Liszt and Bruckner struggled to find equally convincing ways to crown their symphonies with climactic final movements that opened the gates of heaven (Bruckner especially wished to do that!).  Gernsheim's aim here is to achieve that magnificence by varying his theme and attacking it with his favourite device of cross-rhythms, but it all sounds a little too academic to be truly convincing -- mainly because the theme itself has become merely stodgy.

However, the closing stretto redeems him and the work, the sudden shift in tempo and brightening of the sound picture bringing a quick but convincing buildup to a punctual, emphatic final chord.

This symphony is so filled with riches of melody, orchestration, and rhythmic ingenuity that it seems almost impossible for it to last only 30 minutes.

Gernsheim, on the evidence of this music, was a composer of real skill and imagination, and trod his own path.  Like the eminent Czech composer Dvorak, Gernsheim did not let his admiration for the music of Brahms drag him too far into mere imitation.  This second symphony is definitely the work of a man sure of his own way, and able to express himself in his own distinct style.  I look forward to hearing more of his music!


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