<<  -- 2 --  Peter Dale    HUMANITARIAN ANXIETY

It's hard not to hear in this music a spiritual defiance of the brutalities of the worst of the twentieth century and, in particular, of totalitarianism in Poland. It is uncompromising in its seriousness, its musical integrity and its striving for the light beyond the darkness.

The Fourth Symphony is more abstract, more demanding to listen to, but its field of thought is broadly similar. Sardonic wit and grotesque martial strutting evoke the realities of brutal force even as they ridicule their grotesque assumption of nobility. But the real centres of gravity are always the extensive episodes of elegiac beauty.

For all that the symphonic structure is driven by an essential unity of mood rather than by formal geography, the piece has an unmistakable integrity and a sense of compelling argument. Dark moments abound; dull moments never.

The prodigious commitment of orchestra and conductor to this music matches its stature. It is hard to imagine more idiomatically persuasive performances.