Orchestre Philharmonique des Sudètes - Wissmer: Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6 (2014)

Symphony No 5 (1969)

Conceived for the same orchestra as the Fourth Symphony, to which he however adds the Berliozian sonority of chimes, the Fifth Symphony roots Wissmer in post-serialism but, above all, reveals the premises of a programmatic thinking of music, which is audible in the second and third movements. After the formal and conceptual rigour of his beginnings, here the desire to revive the musical narrativity of composers of symphonic poems and descriptive music suddenly appears, but always in the composer’s emblematic polystylistic freedom.

Allegro at the minim and with irregular bars, this first movement is quite invigorating by virtue of his handling masses in homorhythmic style, linked between them by contrapuntal rejoinders of sections or soli: oboe, timpani, trumpet and flute. Fleeting tonal colours punctuate a twelve-note system that, however, generates cantabile themes, opening and ending in a colour of C.

Playing on a contrast effect, the Andante malinconico, irregular at the crotchet, opens with a chromatic counterpoint of oboes, clarinets and violas soon blossoming towards the tutti up to a majestic call of the brass before returning to the melismatic spirit of the beginning, blending two cellos, the English horn and bassoon prior to a final cello solo punctuated by mysterious combinations of flutes, celesta and divisi strings.

The fast Allegro burlesco (3/4) that follows straightaway presents its founding series by the solo oboe in a very brief andante, immediately retrograded on the clarinet. It is then declined, varied, and even distorted by different sections on a burlesque dance rhythm. A central moderato (4/4) proposes a more tragic development of it, before the return of the Allegro burlesco, granting a preponderant place to the percussion. This effect prefigures the xylophone and timpani solos of the final movement, marked Moderato, but within which ten different tempi follow, forming a rondo centred on the récurrent chromatic fugal theme of the Allegro con moto. Skilfully playing on the contrasts between soloist engravings and tutti explosions in a gesture close to those of Strauss, Janáček and Messiaen, Wissmer leads the orchestra to the heart of a generous lyricism that blazes in an apotheosis of a C major appoggiatura.

Symphony No 6 (1975–77)

Even though the origin of the titles of these movements of the Sixth Symphony remains unknown to us at the present time, we are obliged to acknowledge that Wissmer is taking a new path here, turned towards the quasi-descriptive expression of a religious (Préface, Méditation) or contemplative (Nocturne) feeling. He maintains the large orchestra whose timbres he likes to overlap, but goes back to the three-movement layout of the first two symphonies. A tonal feeling round the recurrent pedal of E flat and lyrical melodies come to the surface, even though their context often still remains chromatic or polytonal.

An obsessive, haunting E flat pedal in the trombones and strings announces in a polytonal effect a Maestoso chorale close to E, stated in the winds and continued in the brass, returning to the pedal concluded by a timpani roll: this is the Préface, here a reference more religious than literary, first part of the first movement. It is followed by the Sonate, a vast fresco based on two themes of chromatic essence woven in canonic or fugal figures, before the return of the E flat pedal and the dramatisation of the discourse up to the final chord of the tutti.

The Nocturne, Molto moderato in 4/4, then establishes a Debussyist atmosphere round an impassioned theme in the strings leading to a vibrant tutti, worked in a spirit of collective improvisation and broken by a silence into which snatches of the initial theme are incorporated before a dramatic coda.

The last movement is tripartite: an expressive Méditation based on a series exposed in full by the flute and oboe, in which we again find the trochaic E flat pedal, then the triumphant Dédicace, Allegro giusto ma energico (2/2) in which the colour of E flat banishes chromaticism and welcomes echoes of folk themes and fanfares. Finally, an Épilogue, Molto moderato e espressivo, built on the E flat pedal, recapitulates all the atmospheres of the previous movements before ending up on the E flat common chord, desired since the beginning of the work: an implicit reference to Wagner’s Ring?