Sibelius, Britten, Barber & Part: Romanza - Music for Strings

This album features two compositions

by Jean Sibelius from different

moments in the Finnish musician's life.

The Impromptu Op.5 for string

ensemble is an early work from 1894, in

which Sibelius uses some thematic

materials from his solo piano

impromptus Nos. 5 and 6 from the Op.5

set. The Romance in C Op.42 (1903) was

composed during a difficult phase in the

composer's life caused by excessive

alcohol consumption, which prompted

him to leave Helsinki and move with his

wife near to Lake Tuusula, where he

could dedicate himself to composition

far from the temptations of the Finnish

capital. The piece is divided into short

sections in which the melodic ideas

arise from fragments of the octatonic,

or diminished, scale of alternating

whole and half steps supported by

dissonant harmonies that add further

tonal instability.

Samuel Barber's typically inspired

melodic vein emerges from the very

beginning in his Serenade Op.1 for String

Quartet or String Orchestra, dating from 1928.

Featuring chromaticism's and dissonant

passages, a duality is established between a

first, rhythmic and impetuous thematic idea

and a lyrical melody. The final movement

brings greater serenity and joy through the

choice of a major mode and the adoption of a

graceful and leaping theme whose fragments

pass in counterpoint between one voice and

another.

When Benjamin Britten composed his Simple

Symphony Op.4 he was just 20 years old, and

he describes the idea in an introduction to the

score: 'This "Simple Symphony" is entirely

based on material from works which the

composer wrote between the ages of nine

and twelve [.]. Although the development of

these themes is in many places quite new,

there are large stretches of the work which

are taken bodily from the early pieces - save

for the re-scoring for strings'. In effect, Britten

extrapolates eight themes from his juvenile

compositional production, associates two of

them with each movement and creates a

structural mix between the four movements of

a Classical symphony, the dances of the

Baroque suite and popular folklore.

Da pacem Domine is a Gregorian style piece

composed by Arvo Pärt in 2004 to

commemorate the victims of the Madrid

terrorist attacks on trains, which killed 192

people. Pärt first composed a version for four

voices on the text of a Latin prayer. That

atmosphere of contemplation is preserved in

his subsequent edition for chamber orchestra.

The modal composition, in D Dorian, conveys

the feeling of a search for calmness, a request

from man to God for peace in the wake of such

a tragedy. Scattered appearances of B flat and

the leading tone (C sharp) mitigate and add a

piquancy to the modal atmosphere.