Yes, Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan. As far as I know, this is his only symphony and is title the "Irish", in the same way the Mendelssohn's 3rd is the Scottish. The ideas for the piece were generated while he was on vacation there. Overall, the vibe is early-mid Romantic, and kind of sounds like an amalgamation of Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn with a couple exceptions that I'll talk about briefly. Mostly, though, the piece just sounds like an imitation of other symphonies at the time, without a lot of Sullivan's personal style in it.
So the exceptions... the outer movements have a heavy reliance of dotted rhythms, and are probably the closest to demonstrating the style that Sullivan is known for. The second movement's main theme is curiously presented in octave horn and alto trombone (yes I read that somewhere... can't pick out an alto trombone out of a crowd). The third movement feels the most genuine, with an almost pastoral quality and an excellent use of oboe solo. Also odd is that I wouldn't have assumed this was a British symphony until the last two movements.
Other than the third movement I would probably just suggest a Schubert or Mendelssohn symphony to someone. To be fair, probably Schubert, as I'm not the biggest Mendelssohn fan.
No comments:
Post a Comment