Sir Donald Tovey: Symphony in D & The Bride of Dionysus

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The Malmö Orchestra does wonders with the technically taxing Symphony, due doubtless to appropriately firm directions from George Vass. — BBC Music Magazine, September 2006, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 20th Mar 2006
Catalogue No: TOCC0033
Label: Toccata Classics
Length: 63 minutes

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Tovey, D: The Bride of Dionysus

Work length5:46

$1.00

$1.30

Malmö Opera
George Vass

The Bride of Dionysus: Prelude

Track length5:46

$1.00

$1.30

Tovey, D: Symphony in D major, Op. 32

Work length58:00

$13.00

$16.70

Malmö Opera
George Vass

I. Allegro maestoso

Track length18:23

$4.00

$5.15

II. Scherzo: Vivace ma non troppo presto

Track length13:10

$3.00

$3.85

III. Canzona Dorica: Adagio

Track length12:36

$3.00

$3.85

IV. Allegro con moto energico

Track length13:51

$3.00

$3.85

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Donald Francis Tovey (1875–1940) has long been known as one of the finest writers on music in English – but he saw himself primarily as a composer. His powerful and ambitious Symphony, written in 1913, has its stylistic roots in Brahms and Bruckner, and more distantly in Schumann, but Tovey was also open to contemporary developments: the harmonic procedures occasionally invoke Reger, the adventurous use of orchestral colour suggests Mahler and Nielsen and the scale – it is almost an hour in length – casts the work as a mighty cousin to Elgar’s two symphonies, finished not long before. This is its first recording since Tovey himself conducted a BBC broadcast performance in 1937. The disc opens with the first recording of the gentle, noble Prelude to Tovey’s only opera, The Bride of Dionysus, begun in 1907 and completed in 1918.

Reviews

September 2006

The Malmö Orchestra does wonders with the technically taxing Symphony, due doubtless to appropriately firm directions from George Vass.

2010

Although lasting the best part of an hour and occasionally over-thickly scored, Tovey's Symphony holds the attention, not least due to his keen sense of long-term dialogue and harmonic adventure, allied to a felicitous mastery of counterpoint.
Brahms and Reger are the most obvious stylistic templates (the symphony's arrestingly pregnant pianissimo opening idea even hints at Nielsen), yet a quiet individuality emerges from the radiant Canzonetta slow movement in particular, and the scampering Scherzo has a pleasingly mischievous twinkle in its eye.
A very creditable performance, too, from the Malmö Opera Orchestra under George Vass, who also acquit themselves most ably in the noble Prelude to Tovey's 1918 opera The Brideof Dionysus which launches proceedings. Good if not perhaps ideally ventilated sound.

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