Symphony No. 5 "Kalmar Nyckel"...
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A cheering audience greeted the world premiere of this new work performed by the Delaware Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Stephen Gunzenhauser on March 29, 1988, in Wilmington's Grand Opera House. It was commissioned by the Kalmar Nyckel Commemorative Committee to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the establishment of New Sweden.
A cheering audience greeted the world premiere of this new work performed by the Delaware Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Stephen Gunzenhauser on March 29, 1988, in Wilmington's Grand Opera House. It was commissioned by the Kalmar Nyckel Commemorative Committee to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the establishment of New Sweden.
The News-Journal observed that "His Symphony
#5 captures much of the tension and contrast of a voyage of exploration.
The one-movement work is particularly effective in the turbulent
introduction. Lees writes in brisk, chopped phrases, offering
fine material for brass and percussion. The moods shifted from
the claustrophobic boredom of shipboard life to moments of potential
catastrophe. . . . The performance brought the audience to its
feet for a long ovation for composer and orchestra."
The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, "The Kalmar
Nyckel symphony is bright and brash, and because of its dominant
dramatic thrust it seems more than a little programmatic. . .
. The work is leavened with a lyrical middle section that features
impassioned horn and bass-clarinet solos that are taken up contrapuntally
by the violas and cellos. An explosive final section, returning
to the drum rolls and trumpet calls of its origin, concludes the
symphony, which is notable for its scoring for the lower registers.
Lees was in the audience and received a prolonged standing ovation."
Continuing the enthusiastic response to this new work, the
critic William Carlton, writing in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
after the November 12, 1988, performance by the Fort Wayne Philharmonic
commented: "The symphony relates the voyage of the (Swedish)
colonists aboard the ship 'Kalmar Nyckel.' It is a great piece
of music with plenty of bracing wind in its sails. The dominant
contours of Lees' symphony have slashing drum rolls, dramatic
fanfares for brass, triumphant bells, haunting string passages
and pulsating dance figures. The composer was in the audience
and Ondrejka called him on stage to take a well-deserved bow at
the end of the performance."
Steve Schwartz, writing at www.classicalcdreview.com, wrote as follows:
"Benjamin Lees' concertos have tended to crowd out his symphonies from public attention. I remember only the release during the LP era of the Symphony No. 2 by Robert Whitney and the Louisville Orchestra. The appearance of the Symphony No. 4 'Memorial Candles' on Naxos with Kuchar and the Ukrainians -- a strong work in a very good performance indeed -- has created some anticipation for this release. All of the Lees symphonies, excepting the first, are now available on CD.
"Lees works in a classic modern idiom, although in an individual way. He shouldn't give a listener any more fits than Piston, Diamond, or Mennin. Lees' instinct for drama and conflict help make him a fantastic concerto writer and a symphonist of at least more than passing interest. If you analyze the music, you find links to the post-Beethoven symphonic tradition, but the similarities function more as analogies than anything else.
"Lees' shapes are fantastic, in the sense of odd. While one can (and Lees does) talk of near-sonata form, one almost always finds the architecture subservient to a rhetorical or dramatic pattern. Nevertheless, no matter how unusual the result, one always gets the impression of great coherence in a Lees work.
"The fifth symphony of 1998 celebrates the first (and short-lived) Swedish settlement in the New World (present-day Delaware, they think). The symphony transcends the circumstances of its commission. I doubt anyone, if not told, would connect the music to the historical circumstances, although knowing them gives the listener another line of contemplation. It's a one movement-symphony but, as usual with these things, falls into three large subsections, analogous to a three-movement symphony. The first charges along with the energy of a toccata. The second assumes an elegiac tone, and, with a distant fanfare in chords from the horns, seems to eulogize heroism. A long "corkscrew" idea in the strings (much of it two-part writing) unwinds with increasing intensity. The strings have the last word, before the first main idea of the third movement in mixed and odd meters breaks in, dominated by brass and percussion. It's exuberant, it's also nervous and jittery as a thoroughbred. Episodes of contrasting character -- chorale, grotesque allegrettos -- intervene, before the first idea reasserts itself and a blazing conclusion caps the whole thing off. Lees describes the last movement as "joyous," and I'll certainly grant him that at the end, but it's overall just as emotionally slippery as almost every other piece of his I've heard."
PLEASE NOTE:
No reproductions of photos, articles, music or reviews are permitted without permission
of the Estate of Benjamin Lees.
No reproductions of photos, articles, music or reviews are permitted without permission
of the Estate of Benjamin Lees.