Henri Sauguet - Symphonies Nos.3 & 4

Henri SAUGUET (1901-1989)

Symphony No. 3 (I.N.R.) (1955)

Symphony No. 4 (du troisième age)(1971

Moscow Symphony Orchestra

Antonio de Almeida

Recorded at the Mosfilm Studio in Moscow, Russia in January, 1995.

 

Sauguet's Symphony No. 3 was first performed in 1955 at the Venice Festival of Contemporary Music by the Orchestra of Belgian Radio, conducted by Franz André. The work is in three movements, the first of which, a B minor Impetuosamente, has a first theme marked by its anapaestic rhythm and reminiscent of Beethoven in its basic character. The second theme is almost dodecaphonic, with its leaps of a seventh and dotted rhythm. The second movement, marked Nobilmente, is a grand and noble passacaglia, starting with an introduction for percussion alone and ending with a kind of melodic and harmonic disintegration. The final Rondo, marked Risoluto and in 3/8, picks up again the Beethovenian character of the first movement, bringing to the classical development two slow, singing themes, presented as an interlude. This alternation of rapid dance and slow meditation provides an opportunity for dynamic projection, in space and in time.

 Jean-Paul Holstein: La Revue musicale

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Composer's Programme Notes

Symphony No.3 (I.N.R.)  

This symphony was written to mark the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the Symphony Orchestra of the National Broadcasting Institution of Belgium, to which it is dedicated, with its distinguished director Franz André. It bears as sub-title the initia1s of Belgian Radio, I.N.R., which also represents the initial letters of the directions for each movement: Impetuosamente - Nobilmente - Risoluto.

1. Impetuosamente. The movement is, as it were, a place where fugal elements meet and sport together, contradict each other, turn back on themselves as they play, become angry and disperse without reconciling their differences.

2. Nobilmente. The movement is a passacaglia, taken in the etymological sense of the Spanish word, passing along the street, but at first following the form established by the seventeenth century masters, a repetition, without development, of the opening theme. A mood is created by the percussion instruments which establish the rhythm of the passacaglia itself, which is varied and dissolves into final silence.

3. Risoluto. The final movement is a scherzo in the manner of a rondo which continues from beginning to end without weakening, brilliant, lively, only interrupted at different points by a dreamy element that becomes lyrical, raising this scherzo to the dramatic heights of a symphonic finale.

 

Symphony No. 4 (du troisième age)

 

Sauguet's Symphony No. 4, du troisième age (of the third age) was first performed in Paris in 1971 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées by the Concerts Pasdeloup, with the conductor Gérard Devos.

Here I was confronted by my own self as I crossed this frontier into a state that would lead me inevitably to old age and death. From this secret chamber where timeless memory dwells impassive arose a fourth symphony, dialogue with what, little by little, turns into a shadow and goes on with the choices and options of a youth not destroyed but fixed and now revealed in its formal nakedness.

 Born to music in the great movement of simplification of signs and of musical material, proceeding from a whole sequence of ideas, great or small, aspiring and determined to perpetuate their offshoots. Impossible, therefore, ever to be able to disguise the thought and to dress it in the taste or fashions of the times, as they were, not through deliberate act of will, but because of their own qualities, the only authenticity. And this world makes harmonies from melodic lines, from the interplay of intervals, modulations from the movements themselves and from instrumental colours, from rhythmic beats that calm or excite the body, this is what I am trying again to explore and offer, on the threshold of this third age. Thus, in the traditional mould of three movements, there follow, in tonal ambiguity tinged with modal writing, an Allegro vivo e marcato, a Lento and an Allegro vivo e scherzando.