Customer Reviews

Franco Alfano: Symphonies 1 & 2

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To the degree that Franco Alfano (1875-1954) is remembered today outside Italy it is primarily for his completion of Puccini's last opera, 'Turandot,' at the request of the Ricordi publishing house after Puccini died before finishing that opera's third act. His completion has been roundly criticized, and indeed at the première performance Toscanini did not perform it out of homage to Puccini. But when he did, at the next performance, play the completion, he played a much cut version. Indeed Alfano's original version was never performed until some time in the 1980s. Be that as it may, Alfano in his own time was a fairly successful operatic composer and he is remembered for three in particular: 'Risurrezione,' based on Tolstoy's 'Resurrection,' 'Sakùntala,' based on a Sanskrit tale, and more recently 'Cyrano de Bergerac,' based on Rostand's famous play. All three are successful works.

Almost nobody knows that Alfano wrote two symphonies. But the cpo label, which has a genius for bringing us unknown or forgotten works, has just released this performance of Alfano's two symphonies. The first, written in 1910, is a rather rambling thing that doesn't quite cohere but which contains some striking music nonetheless. There is a medieval air that hangs over the work, and indeed it is subtitled 'Classica.' This certainly does not refer to the 'classical style' of composition, but rather seems to imply an evocation of ancient music, and it certainly has that. There are some faint Orientalisms not unlike those in Puccini--perhaps that's one reason Alfano was asked to complete Puccini's Chinese opera--with echoes of Respighi (who actually hadn't written all that much when this symphony was written), Rimsky-Korsakoff as well as Impressionistic washes of harmony reminiscent not so much of Debussy as of Scriabin. Melodic construction is odd, harmonic handling is a bit rough-and-ready, and the form is a bit hard to fathom--in all three movements--but there is something here, exciting orchestral color and repeated climaxes which, although they don't make much formal sense, are still pretty effective.

The Second Symphony, written in 1931, is written in a sparser, less colorful language, a rather more neo-classical style. There are some oddities--one passage in the first movement, repeated several times, has a strange sudden cutting off of final chords of several similar phrases; the first time through I thought it was a defect in the CD it was so unexpected; later I grew to rather like the effect, although I'm not quite sure what purpose it served other than to call attention to itself. It occurs to me just now as I write this that something similar happens from time to time in Janácek. Harmonies are more successfully managed, are a bit more astringent, and sound rather more 'modern' than anything in the First Symphony. The second movement, Largo, is a pastorale partaking of a summer-like languor. It has some lovely woodwind solos. The finale, 'Solenne--Allegro alla marcia (pomposo),' begins with hieratic trumpet fanfares which usher in a mock-serious march that has some similarities to Prokofiev's march from 'The Love for Three Oranges' which was written at ten years or so earlier. Considering that Alfano knuckled under to the demand of the Italian Fascist arts committee to make his music more accessible to the masses, one wonders if this ironic allegro is his Shostakovian nose-thumbing at the powers-that-were. For all its supposed high spirits, this march has an edgy undertone that suggests as much.

These two performances by the Brandenburg State Orchestra of Frankfurt (the less-well-known eastern Frankfurt am Oder, very close to the Polish border) under Israel Yinon scrambles at times, but gives a more-or-less adequate overall impression of these two symphonies, and let's face it, there are not likely to be any other recordings any time soon. So, if you're interested in the orchestral output of this Italian who is so often mentioned in the same breath as Malipiero, Casella, Pizzetti and Respighi, this is your chance to familiarize yourself with some.

Scott Morrison

There has quite obviously been a resurgence of interest in the music of Franco Alfano the last couple of years, with some of his operas available in multiple versions (though most of them still unrecorded). Of his non-operatic music, I welcomed a Naxos disc of chamber music a little while ago (masterly), and this disc containing his two symphonies is definitely worth hearing, though neither is as consistently impressive as, say, his cello sonata. The two symphonies are relatively similar in language and execution (the first is subtitled "Classica" but only with the utmost charity is it really possible to detect much classical inspiration), although it is possible to trace some more modern influences in the second.

The style is impressionistically oriented late-romanticism, with traces of verismo inspiration being incorporated (relatively successfully) into a symphonic format. Apart from that, the music nods in the direction of the extreme romanticism of the post-Straussians - Schreker, Zemlinsky and so on; a similarity in spirit to Respighi, perhaps - both works might, somewhat roughly, sound like a collaboration between Debussy and Leoncavallo, as revised by Schreker.

But Alfano doesn't quite come up to any of the suggested composers when it comes to level of invention, thematic strength or the ability to make a concentrated argument. I guess the latter point might be my main objection to the works at hand - there isn't really a strong overall formal coherence present in either works; rather they are both feasts of glittering orchestration, flourishes of strings and percussion, cascades of harps and celesta. The end results are in both cases hugely enjoyable, but more as spectacular showers of color and atmospheric moments than symphonic arguments or even memorable melodies. The performances are generally very fine and Yinon seems, rightly, to go for brilliance and effect rather than trying to piece together an argument that really isn't there. The sound is superb. Overall, I am not quite sure this disc deserves a full five stars, but it is really an enjoyable release.