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Orchestral music
 Moeran's
output for full orchestra spans his entire output, and yet
the sum total is not a huge amount of music. However, if it
is lacking in quantity, it is certainly made up for in quality.
Moeran had a wonderful gift for orchestration, and in listening
one detects an easy, almost instinctive feel in the handling
of the music. As such it may come as something of a surprise
that he worked often so slowly on his orchestral music, and
rewrote, reviewed and discarded ruthlessly anything he felt
less than perfect.
During the 1920's Moeran produced several works
for orchestra: his first two Rhapsodies,
the second of which was reworked nearly twenty years later;
The "Symphonic Impression", In
The Mountain Country, and "Two Pieces for Small
Orchestra", Lonely Waters
and Wythorne's Shadow. Of these
last two there is some doubt as to the precise dates of composition,
as they were published together in 1935, although there is
evidence to suggest Lonely Waters perhaps dating originally
from 1924.
Begun in 1924 but put to one side and not finally
completed until 1937, the Symphony
is regarded by many as the high point of Moeran's output.
It is often a dark, brooding work stretching over four movements,
yet contains a delightful Scherzo in the third movement -
in Moeran's own words: the sunlight is let in, and there is
a spring-like contrast to the wintry proceedings of the slow
[second] movement. Listen to
the Symphony here
Moeran's Violin Concerto
is, for me, one of the great works of this genre. If there
is one piece which justifies Moeran receiving greater recognition
it is surely this - a work which can swing you from delight
to tears in minutes. The Cello Concerto
was one of Moeran's last major works, written for his wife
- the cellist Peers Coetmore - in 1945, and stands as a robust
and sweeping confirmation of his compositional brilliance.
Listen to the Violin Concerto here
Moeran referred to the Sinfonietta,
written in 1944, as something of an experiment: writing about
the composition of the Cello Sonata perhaps two years later:
I shall have to find a new idiom, as I did temporarily when
I wrote the Sinfonietta. It is a three movement work in perhaps
a neo-classical style, exuberant and brisk, with a degree
of harmonic experimentation which adds interest without detracting
from the beauty of the work. Listen
to the Sinfonietta here
The Overture for a Masque
was written in 1944 for Walter Legge, who was at the time
commissioning works for wartime performances at concerts for
troops. Despite Moeran's initial dismissal of the work in
progress as "Legge's Overture", he slowly came round
to enjoying the piece: I think it turns out to be quite a
good little work - what you might call athletic in style...it
takes the devil of a time to write out. The Overture followed
the Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra
of 1942-3, where a pianist joins forces with the full orchestra
for a single movement requiring great virtuosity of the soloist.
Again Moeran's opinion of this work grew, from it contains
more than its fair share of tripe to I find I was wrong, and
I really think that after all it is a very good effort on
my part. Others seem to agree, as this is now one of Moeran's
most played works on the radio. The Serenade
in G of 1947-8 was Moeran's last complete orchestral
piece, with sections partly reworked from an earlier work
which he withdrew. Based around Tudor and Baroque dance rhythms,
it contains 6 or 8 short movements, depending on which version
you listen to!
Other orchestral works have existed or been
worked on by Moeran. Into this fall the Farrago
Suite, part of which was to become integrated into
the Serenade, a Fanfare for Red Army
Day for a Royal Albert Hall concert in 1944 which has
since disappeared, and the Second
Symphony, fragments of which exist in various forms,
but which he was unable to complete before his death.
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