I’m excited to share my thoughts on the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies of Matthew Taylor. His Fifth Symphony was written as part of the English Symphony Orchestra’s 21st Century Project, and premiered by the orchestra in Cadogan Hall in June, 2019. His Fourth was written for the Kensington Symphony with support from Arts Council England, and recorded by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in January 2020. You can hear the Fourth on BBC Radio 3, and later on BBC Sounds, on Afternoon Concert, 13 October, 2020 at around 3:35 UK Time
The complete CD on Nimbus Alliance is released on 6 November.
Matthew Taylor – Symphonist
How musical mirror images show the range of a master composer at the height of his powers.
Matthew Taylor didn’t have to work very hard to convince me that he should be one of the composers involved in the English Symphony Orchestra’s 21st Century Symphony Project. In fact, the seeds of his participation were laid at my very first concert with the ESO in Malvern in 2013, when local arts patron Keith Stanley introduced himself and handed me a CD with Matthew’s Second Symphony and Viola Concerto. “If you’re going to be the new man here,” said Keith, “perhaps this is the kind of music you might want to do.”
He was right. I’d seen positive reviews of that very disc, and when I listened to the Second Symphony for the first time, my elation at discovering a major symphonist was tempered only by my mild regret that another conductor had gotten to record this thrilling work first.
Matthew and I met not long after the ESO announced the 21st C. Symphony Project, and the work he told me he wanted to write sounded like a thrilling addition to the project. He described a single movement symphony that started with an explosion of frenetic, violent energy which gradually transformed into a huge, cathartic Adagio hymn of joy. It sounded not only like a wonderful work, but also as a fantastic contrast to the first two works in the 21CSP.
Of course, listeners to Matthew’s Fifth Symphony, his contribution to the 21CSP will discover a work that has almost nothing in common with the idea of a piece Matthew fist described to me. It is something else, entirely.
It is something of a tradition among symphonists to write “something else entirely.” Brahms almost always wrote works in highly contrasted pairs, often one major and one minor. Hence his first two Piano Quartets in G minor and A major, the first two symphonies in C minor and D Major, or the last two in F major and E minor. Mozart’s last two symphonies couldn’t be more starkly contrasted in mood and colour, and though we think of Beethoven’s Fifth as quintessentially Beethovenian, it is hugely different from both the Fourth and Sixth.
Hearing these two powerful new symphonies side by side, one can’t help but be struck by the ways in which they complement and contrast one another. They are clearly songs from the same voice, and speak the same musical language. Although the two works are fundamentally different in structure and emotional impact, one can still see interesting similarities in how Taylor approaches symphonic form, particularly in his telling, but very selective, use of cyclic structures. The return of the music of the opening of the Fourth Symphony in the final minutes of the finale (although Matthew describes the Fourth as a symphony in one movement, as a practical matter, it unfolds as three movements played without pause), and the second timpani cadenza at the climax of the last of movement of the Fifth both serve to define the endpoint of their respective works’ journeys, one triumphant, one tragic. Listeners will also note a similarity in Taylor’s approach to important musical transitions and arrivals – the passages just before the recapitulations in the first movements of both works are strikingly similar in the way they wind down to almost nothing before a new explosion of energy. Taylor also has a very distinctive harmonic and melodic palate, and the effective way in which he uses melodies to build chords brings that quality to the fore in both symphonies.
The Nielsen-esque energy of the opening of the Fourth, can be heard in both the poly-metric overlapping figurations in the woodwinds in the first bars and the vigorous antiphonal timpani writing which first appears a few seconds later. I find the structure of this movement incredibly compelling, starting as it does with a high level of rhythmic density, including in the playful gamelan-esque second theme, and moving towards a towering apotheosis in which the rhythmic contours and meter become ever grander. The movement starts in the familiar time signature of 3/4, but ends in 3/1, a most unusual and effective result of a process of gradual thematic transformation and rhythmic expansion.
The Fourth is dedicated to the recently deceased composer, John McCabe and his widow Monica, and though Matthew points out that he has “always felt that the best way to pay tribute is to adopt an approach that is essentially celebratory in spirit,” the Adagio teneramente is music of deep emotion and real pathos. To me, the melancholic atmosphere of the movement is heightened and given a special intensity by the starring role given to the viola section.
The finale, with its Haydnesque quicksilver wit and many moments of slapstick humour could easily fool one into thinking that Taylor is crowning this symphony with a celebration of frivolity. However, a good storyteller knows that the true meaning of a great novel is only revealed on its last page, and the same is true for symphonists. When the music of the opening returns, it gives us the moment of recapitulation and closure the first movement forsook, bringing the entire work full circle with a mix of joy and nobility.
The Fourth Symphony was written for a very large orchestra, the Fifth for a much smaller ensemble using the same forces as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the other symphony heard on the concert at Cadogan Hall, London, where it was premiered by the English Symphony Orchestra in 2019. Stripped of percussion, harp and keyboards, the soundworld of the Fifth Symphony is more austere than that of the Fourth, but no less intense. And though the Fifth uses a string section about half the size of the Fourth, it is, in many ways, the more explosive work.
The Fifth is Matthew’s first symphony in four movements, but the balance of those movements is most unusual. The Adagio finale is about half of the length of the whole work, and the ferocious first movement, while shorter, is also music searing power. In between we have, instead of the traditional slow movement and scherzo, two very slight intermezzi, both of which use only a small portion of the orchestra.
Taylor said that the first movement was the result of his wish to write a sonata allegro movement with the kind of taut dramatic urgency of Beethoven’s Fifth. This is music of explosive temperament, and although it has some beautiful moments of an almost scherzando character, one can’t help but feel that it is driving towards some kind of violent oblivion. When we first read this movement with the orchestra, the apocalyptic ending (as played by timpanist Emmanuel Joste), left everyone in the room speechless for a moment.
The second movement uses only a handful of string players – initially only two on a part, and later a solo string quartet. After the density and intensity of the first movement, this is music which floats and twists in the air like smoke and mist. The third movement restores the full string section, but uses no other instruments until the mercurial flute solo (played by Laura Jellicoe) emerges in the final bars. There are some absolutely bewitching colours here in Taylor’s use of the strings. This music is as delicate as a glass thread, full of quietly whispered emotions.
Although the symphony has always been a genre in which composers express powerful, often dark, emotions, true tragic symphonies are actually quite rare. Mozart, Brahms, and Mahler only wrote one each. Beethoven, Bruckner and Schumann didn’t write any. The Adagio begins in the string-dominated soundworld of the third movement, but the mood is already dark. The first section builds up to a climax not dissimilar from the first one in the slow movement of the Fourth Symphony. A second episode begins with just the woodwinds playing a new theme in a slightly faster tempo (a favourite feature of the slow movements of Beethoven 9 and many of the Bruckner symphonies).
There follows a return of the material of the opening, but now played as a brass chorale, punctuated by bassoon and contrabassoon. When the brass finish their statement with a huge fortissimo and the strings enter pppp, with music that seems to share some of the spider-web characteristics of the third movement, we have the feeling that we’ve reached the end of the beginning and embarked on the main, fateful struggle of the movement, which will be essentially a pair of expanded variations on these two opening themes. The sextuplet semiquavers will underpin the entire middle section of the movement, continuing in one way or another all the way through the climax to the work’s coda.
The tragic ending of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony is made all the more shocking by the fact that, in spite of the hammer blows, it has pages and pages of the most heroic and hopeful music he ever wrote. When the hero is struck down for the last time in that symphony’s final bars, one can’t help but react with a mixture of horror and disbelief. The finale of Taylor’s Fifth confronts the seeming inevitability of a dark outcome from the first bars, but Taylor manages to constantly keep raising the dramatic intensity throughout, holding back one dramatic turning point after another. The middle section ends with a return of the timpani solo from the first movement, and the impact here is even more harrowing, as the timpani gradually run out of steam over a long, static string chord.
The coda ends with a quartet of solo celli, a sound both mournful and symbolic. Sorrowful as it is, there is, at least, some sense of warmth and consolation in their plaintive singing. But Taylor has held back one, final Mahlerian surprise. The cellos’ gentle threnody is suddenly cut short by an e-flat minor chord in the trombones and timpani. I can’t think of a bleaker sound in all music. And after that, there is nothing.
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