★★★★
Is anyone writing symphonies these days? Not long ago, a symphonic premiere was a highlight of the concert season. That habit died in the present century as orchestras lost confidence in abstract music and composers turned to gimmickry. In the process, a cultural cornerstone has been left to crumble and die.
If the name John McCabe still resonates, it may be for his Decca recordings of the complete piano music of Joseph Haydn, father of the four-movement symphony. Raised on Merseyside by Irish and German-Finn parents, McCabe was drawn to Carl Nielsen and Karl Amadeus Hartmann as primary influences. His orchestral music was regularly performed up to his death in 2015, seldom since.
It is wonderfully refreshing to hear his second and third symphonies again. Both offer structural assurance from the opening statement, one a solo flute, the other a full-ensemble theme. You know where you’re going with McCabe and you sense that the musicians are enjoying the journey every bit as much as you are. The music tells a story and there’s enough going on to sustain concentration. I am reminded of other lost-property symphonists — Alan Rawsthorne, Edmund Rubbra, Malcolm Arnold, Peter Maxwell Davies. All male, none diverse. Don’t expect to hear them any time soon.
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kenneth Woods, give full expressive value to McCabe’s civilised painterly scores, full of dips and dashes that you’ll want to revisit. Raphael Wallfisch is a mite introspective in the pastel cello concerto but his restraint matches the composer’s undulating understatement. This is such good music I cannot imagine it will be forgotten. The literary novel is making a vigorous comeback from its long-proclaimed death. The modern symphony is overdue a comparable comeback
