Like Brahms, Alan Rawsthorne came late to the symphony, and approached it with a high-minded concern for structure and a mature sense of thematic development and internal unity. In Rawsthorne's practiced hands, the form is shaped along Classical lines, with only slight changes in the layout of the traditional four movements. Yet his music is restless, rugged, and muscular, and quite modern in its free uses of tonality. The pugnacious Symphony No. 1 (1950) is tight in construction and direct in argumentation, without any ...
Read More
Like Brahms, Alan Rawsthorne came late to the symphony, and approached it with a high-minded concern for structure and a mature sense of thematic development and internal unity. In Rawsthorne's practiced hands, the form is shaped along Classical lines, with only slight changes in the layout of the traditional four movements. Yet his music is restless, rugged, and muscular, and quite modern in its free uses of tonality. The pugnacious Symphony No. 1 (1950) is tight in construction and direct in argumentation, without any extraneous material to retard its headlong progress. The short Symphony No. 2, "A Pastoral Symphony" (1959), is more evocative than programmatic, yet Rawsthorne's lyrical expressions still have the propulsion and dramatic contrasts required in a symphony. The vocal finale, though, seems tacked on, and soprano Charlotte Ellet's rather operatic performance is a little disconcerting. The Symphony No. 3 (1964) is the most expansive and harmonically daring, and of the three works most...
Read Less
