Spring Symphonies, No 76: Dukas - Symphony In C

 Dukas: Symphony in C Major

Its a major disappointment that record companies have not chosen to present the consumer with a chance to move on from the inestimable tone poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice to one of Paul Dukas other major works - there are - to be frank only three so it would hardly be a commitment or burden.  The three remaining great works are the opera Ariadne and Bluebeard, the ballet La Peri and the subject of this piece, the symphony in C Major.

Paul Dukas (1865 -1935) has been unduly overlooked and it’s easy to see why. Even in the 1967 edition of Penguin’s The Symphony John Manduell said in regard to symphonies in France post Berlioz “Other French composers…were either too heavily influenced by models from across the Rhine or simply lacked the essential qualities for the task”.  This doesn’t bear close inspection - especially not in the case of Dukas.  This was perpetuated in the Penguin Stereo Record Guide of 1975 marking the symphony as in many respects “an academic work” and lacking the invention of his tone poem and ballet despite the symphony dating from the same period.  And it’s probably the case that in the years since it was written most impresarios have asked for the Apprentice over the Symphony - which accounts for the symphony never being played at the Proms not even when it was new music in 1897.

I feel that perfectionist composers do themselves no good if they are unproductive and throw works.  Brahms was sensible enough to recycle but he also did not allow much to be published.  But we have a sterling body of work from Brahms.  Dukas published output is scant - 14 works published in his lifetime and one published posthumously.  Ten works were binned.  This seems to concern critics of yesteryear - the Penguin guide none-too subtly refer - incorrectly - to Dukas not learning music until he was 15.  If that were true he was on a steep learning curve because he composed his first piece a year later.  Dukas went on to be become a teacher and his pupils included Messiaen, Duruflé and Rodrigo, there wasn’t much composition after his switch to teaching.

More interesting to me is that Dukas was a friend of Debussy and they were students together at the Conservatoire de Paris.  And that is the point which we might recall in the progress of the Dukas’ symphony.

The opening is fast and muscular but not furious and superbly orchestrated - an aspect of this symphony probably which will recur frequently.  This sets a heady pace and a confident mood which we might regard as cribbing from the late romantics but just when they might have projected the first subject into the stratosphere, Dukas calms things down with a willowy linking passage to the second subject which seamlessly leads to the an excited brass motif which is repeated with a jolly vigour.  The score is so spare with the occasional written direction but a great deal of loveliness.  The development begins very quietly which builds with an ebb and flow which is not as direct as the German style might have been.  This teasing is much more in common with French orchestral writing of the time outside o fetch symphonic repertoire.  Slightly in the style of Franck but without the heavy hands and feet of the organist.  The return to the main theme is thrilling as anything by the German school and a deal more elegant and throughout the score remains propelled for a real feeling of what the strings can do in the background.  The brass writing is more intrusive than Debussy would have written.  The recapitulation has such sweet insistence to keep moving that the moods dazzle, the horns shine and the drums hammer.  This is Apprentice territory as we pick up the pace into the coda - excitement builds only to dissolve like candy floss in the mouth.  The real magic here is the last three minutes where we move from fire to gentle waters to a zone of uncertainty which catches fire again to a brilliant conclusion of at least three cadences each more buoyant than the last.

The opening of the slow movement is one of those pristine, glorious episodes in French music of that period it unfolds like a beautiful landscape. The second page alternates bassoon and strings with such lustre and delicate translucence - I can’t think of a similar passage where that combination sound so lovely in German music.  This opening section ends with a flute playing so low in the registered it might be a horn call.  The score here is simple - the sound a shifting gossamer thin.  The whole effect is both static — in temperament and mobile in thematic interest.  It is hugely relaxing until the shimmering strings give way to a horn call and we are back in the world.  A sweeping warm breeze of a melody moves us forward at the music becomes more animated with an ebb and flow similar to the writing of Debussy’s pictorial works and Ravel’s ballet backdrops.  A series of solo interjections and guides us to a lull then a mounting tension to a glorious climax - it is nowhere near as constrained as that description sounds - the framework allows Dukas such ingenuity in expression and the material is very carefully hewn to exploit it.  This movement is in sonata form and there is a great satisfaction in returning motifs and orchestral colours and the ending is just divine.

The danger with a self-critical composer, a small body of works and simple structure to his movements is that prior to hearing they might be thought picky, prissy and tiresome.  This is not the case for Dukas.  The movement is bewitching, haunting and soothing.  It takes the spirit of Debussy’s Nocturnes and the luminosity of Ravel’s pirate island in Daphnis and sets them in a sonata structure which keeps the progress on stricter lines and gives the listener the joy of hearing so much of the music more than fleetingly.  Temptation to compare to Ravel’s ballet is illustrative — not least because there’s over a decade between the Ravel and the Dukas Symphony.  Debussy’s Nocturnes were written in the same decade and whilst Nuages is similar Dukas is much more economical in his orchestration.  Better perhaps compare with the exquisite almost painful tenderness of Clair de Lune as a marker for the moods of Dukas’ slow but never earthbound Andante espressivo e sostenuto 

The last movement is a rondo and begins with a partly martial, bold and striding idea.  The second subject is dreamy and the rest is just an absolute joy.  The scoring is divine and the drama is driven by a simple, standard classical set-up of familiar motifs, increasing complexity and resolution with some extraordinary effects from a standard orchestra.  And there are trumpets - piccolo trumpets too.  It is a fantastic gem — hugely satisfying and delightfully exciting.

Moreover, now we have a hi def recording on Naxos from the RTE National Symphony Orchestra under the fabulous Jean-Luc Tingaud you can hear this work as fresh as a new pin for a budget price.

PS and in another time and place we should explore the Piano Sonata by Dukas - what a piece!