Con Orch/Sym 8

Andrzej Panufnik's Eighth Symphony was written as a musical offering to the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, and the composer relates it to hearing the news of the shipyard strike in Gdansk that was to propel the Solidarity movement to prominence in Poland. Notwithstanding that highly emotive inspiration, the work is in fact highly constructivist in nature, based on a series of three- and four-note cells and a diagram of nested figures of eight that represents the work's two-movement structure. The atmospheric first movement passes a slow, ritualistic melody from one section of the orchestra to another against a backdrop often dominated by pitched percussion. In the closing stages of the movement the music becomes more contrasted, loud and animated brassy passages alternating with gentler string-led ones. The vigorous finale, about half the length of the first movement, begins with a vigorous fanfare that is contrasted against a long melody in the lower strings. These two elements dominate the movement, though as they develop they independently move from one orchestral section to another. (It was the composer's intention to show off the various different sections of the orchestra in this way, and he suggests that the symphony could also be regarded as a concerto for orchestra.)

Roger Sessions' Concerto for Orchestra was the last major work completed by this elder statesman of American music. Written in his trademark version of serialism, it is in three movements which play without a break. The first movement alternates vigorously rhythmic writing and more gentle lyricism, with the woodwind instruments particularly prominent. The second movement is a largely elegiac Largo, dominated by the sonorities of the brass. This intense mood is repeatedly interrupted by more vigorous, rhythmic passages that rise up out of the musical texture. The finale brings all the sections of the orchestra together in a sequence that alternates bouncy rhythms and more pensive episodes before the music fades out in an equivocal conclusion.

Of these two works, I rate the Sessions highly for its unforced post-Schoenbergian lyricism and drama (it strikes me as the equal of all but the very best of his symphonies); by contrast I find the Panufnik a little austere, even if its harmonic language may be more appealing to some. The Boston Symphony Orchestra sound great, and are on top form under Seiji Ozawa (whose conducting of contemporary music has often been underrated). My main criticism of this disc is that it has a very short playing time (the Panufnik lasts only 22 minutes and the Sessions a mere 16); hence, despite the reduced price of this reissue, it is not the bargain it might seem.