Elizabeth Maconchy: Symphony for Double String Orchestra

Elizabeth Maconchy’s Symphony for Double String Orchestra (1952-3) is in the same league as similar works composed by Sir Michael Tippett and Ralph Vaughan Williams. This is quite definitely a masterpiece. Maconchy titled the work ‘on account of its weight and serious content’. However, the formal construction of the piece owes more to Bach’s Brandenburg’s rather than to any ‘classical’ symphony.

This Symphony is in four well-balanced but strongly contrasting movements. The ‘allegro molto’ opens with an insistent and quite aggressive ‘five note figure’, however this is offset by, as Rob Barnett calls it, a ‘fandango pizzicato’ – quite a ‘pop’ tune! The second movement is the heart of the work. Profoundly intense, the composer scores for an expressive solo violin. The music pushes towards a great climax before subsiding into the reflective opening material. This is one of the great ‘elegies’ of British string music. The ‘scherzo’ is wonderful stuff: it well balances the heart rending ‘lento’. This music is written antiphonally with the two groups of strings engaging in a spirited conversation. Yet it is not the traditional ‘joke’. There are some serious matters to be discussed in these pages. The movement ends with nod to things Gallic - or are they Iberian? The reflective mood of much of this piece is continued in the last movement – a well thought out ‘passacaglia’. This is intense music that is well balanced between a long ‘allegro’ section and a soaring ‘lento.’ One is reminded of a dozen composers – but it is never possible to quite put the finger on them! Originality is the keynote.

The Symphony for Double String Orchestra is at the same time beautiful, moving, well-constructed and challenging. It is so wrong that the vagaries of musical appreciation in this country have consigned it to the vaults of the ‘noted by the musicologists but unheard by the public’ type of music. Thank goodness, Lyrita has recorded this work. Let us hope that somehow it will become established in the repertoire of many orchestras. Yet somehow, I feel that this will not be the case.

The Symphony was given it premiere by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios in London on 30 November 1954.

  

Elizabeth Maconchy’s Symphony for Double String Orchestra is available on Lyrita SRCD 288. It has been posted in (search) YouTube.