Leif Segerstam, Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra - Per Nørgård: Symphonie Nos. 4 & 5 (1997)

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Leif Segerstam, Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra - Per Nørgård: Symphonie Nos. 4 & 5 (1997)

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The fifth symphony, which I have seen described as enigmatic and the most elusive of this composer's six essays in the medium, is the one that has enabled me to make the breakthrough into his music. It is a remarkable achievement that has absolutely nothing derivative in it that I can hear, so if I mention Gerhard for the convincing juxtaposition of linear ideas and orchestration and Ives for the multilayering of a marvellous orchestral sounds, it is only to underline the stature of this piece.
The 40-minute Fifth Symphony plays continuously, but on the CD jacket the composer offers one suggested division into four movements as a way in for the new listener. The first movement begins in the bass of the orchestra. All the instruments quickly join in, and the music climbs through the instrumental sections like a huge monster waking up. A period of menacing calm ensues as the musical ideas try to coalesce. Ivesian fragments appear in the strings and the piano. Silence again. Now the strings lead the piano and the rest of the huge ensemble into a more sustained passage, though still with the feeling that ideas are coming together. This gripping music continues until, toward the end of the movement, tubular bells chime in and still the action, ushering in the busy opening of the second movement - as busy as late Gerhard, with Sculthorpe-like birdsong wailings in the strings, the brass interjecting sarcastically. Again there is a feeling of a huge landscape coming to life.
Brass and strings attempt a dialogue which sinks into the depths. The timpani catalyse another attempt which evaporates into the ether. And so it goes on, these succeeding passages all sounding independently and collectively organic - interesting in themselves and part of a bigger whole.
Attacca into the third movement with gentle string meditations that draw in other sections of the orchestra. A Brittenesque passage is wiped out - one, two, three - by three great chordal swipes, only for the growth to begin again. Throughout the whole work huge orchestral arpeggios, brass commentaries and passages of stasis contribute to a sense of event on a cosmic scale.
The last movement grows out of the end of the ten-minute Andante (a deceptively simple label for a movement that contains so much) and within a minute has picked up the dialogue that has been evolving throughout the preceding half hour. Huge swirls of orchestral activity with melodic fragments struggling to predominate. A magnificent accelerando fuelled by the timpani; an ensuing chorale of tragic beauty, at once powerful (the sense of the infinite is sustained throughout the piece) yet emotionally fragile. Another moving build-up on the strings, another evaporation into the ether, a final push of energy like a Mahlerian or Brucknerian apotheosis and - and now everything has gone. Tiny sounds, a few atoms after a galaxy of activity, a long (notated?) silence. It is over.
Superb. A piece that will reward endless rehearings.