Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Bent Sørensen
Second Symphony (2019)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Commissioned by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Filharmonien and Göteborg Symfoniker
Programme Note
This is not a ’Symphony no. 2’. It is a Second Symphony.
For several rather inexplicable reasons it is important to me not “just” to number the symphonies in order to emphasize the genre. Titles, more importantly than genres, are part of my dreams – the dreams that become music. And Second Symphony is definitely both a title and part of a dream.
I thought exactly the same when I composed (and now I almost wrote: "the first") Symphony in 1996.
Second Symphony is in four movements. The first movement opens with a scream. The subsequent parts of the movement form a unified but complex whole, where traces from the coming movements turn up – constantly in interaction with the scream and its echoes.
The second movement is slow and rather melodious. It was actually performed in a “trailer version” – shortened and minimized in December 2018 in the Danish TV programme Deadline.
The third movement is a scherzo – teeming, rhythmic, with almost physical soft and violent meetings, like acts of love between the different layers of music.
The last movement is a farewell song – a goodbye. A musical ship is approaching only to disappear again. Where I perceive the preceding movements as highly contemporary, there is a touch of the past in this last movement – my past. I quote my fourth string quartet Schreie und Melancholie, and in this movement I was also influenced by the fact that my mother passed away during the composition of this piece. Maybe this is my farewell that I write in music.
For several rather inexplicable reasons it is important to me not “just” to number the symphonies in order to emphasize the genre. Titles, more importantly than genres, are part of my dreams – the dreams that become music. And Second Symphony is definitely both a title and part of a dream.
I thought exactly the same when I composed (and now I almost wrote: "the first") Symphony in 1996.
Second Symphony is in four movements. The first movement opens with a scream. The subsequent parts of the movement form a unified but complex whole, where traces from the coming movements turn up – constantly in interaction with the scream and its echoes.
The second movement is slow and rather melodious. It was actually performed in a “trailer version” – shortened and minimized in December 2018 in the Danish TV programme Deadline.
The third movement is a scherzo – teeming, rhythmic, with almost physical soft and violent meetings, like acts of love between the different layers of music.
The last movement is a farewell song – a goodbye. A musical ship is approaching only to disappear again. Where I perceive the preceding movements as highly contemporary, there is a touch of the past in this last movement – my past. I quote my fourth string quartet Schreie und Melancholie, and in this movement I was also influenced by the fact that my mother passed away during the composition of this piece. Maybe this is my farewell that I write in music.
Media
Scores
Reviews
Elegant waves of sound moved calmly through the orchestra, from the brass on the right side to the second violinists on the left, while the melody, as a mist, slid dreamingly up and down, seemingly edgeless.
3rd March 2020
Discography
The Island in the City
- LabelDacapo
- Catalogue Number8.226086
- ConductorJukka-Pekka Saraste
- EnsembleTrio con Brio / Danish National Symphony Orchestra
- Released12th August 2022