Victor Bendix (1851-1926)
Symphony No 1 in C minor, Op 16 “Ascension” (1877-1878)
Symphony No 3 in A minor, Op 25 (1891-1892)
Malmö Symphony Orchestra/Joachim Gustafsson
rec. 2022, Malmö Live Concert Hall, Malmö, Sweden
Dacapo 8.224742 [70]
For collectors interested in little-known symphonic music of the 19th and 20th century the last couple of decades have been something of a Golden Age. Numerous independent labels have unearthed substantial scores by composers whose names, let alone their music, is completely unfamiliar. But what makes this such a rewarding time is that the quality of the performances, interpretations and recordings is now, almost without exception, remarkably high allowing listeners to hear this music as well as can be imagined. Rare repertoire has always been a fertile hunting ground for labels but in the past this was often synonymous with scrappy playing, superficial interpretations and murky engineering.
A case in point was the set of the four Symphonies by Victor Bendix in August 1999 on the danacord label by Evgenyi Shestakov conducting the Omsk Philharmonic Orchestra. These are perfectly good performances reasonably recorded – as evidenced by warm reviews on MWI here and here. On the strength of these I bought that set (which features a genuinely excellent liner note by label owner Jesper Buhl) and have enjoyed the music without feeling it offered anything except an interesting footnote in the history of Danish Symphonic music. In the intervening 25 years almost nothing else of Bendix has been recorded which would seem to underline the sense of his being a marginal composer at best.
At which point enter Joachim Gustafsson conducting the ever-excellent Malmö Symphony Orchestra on this new release. For me at least this has proved to be a transformative listening experience. While I would not make any claims for “lost masterpieces”, Bendix’s first and third symphonies emerge as individual, impressive and genuinely attractive works of far greater emotional power and technical accomplishment than I was previously aware. I have encountered the work of Joachim Gustafsson before as he is one of the driving forces behind the Festivals held in Halmstad that celebrate the work of Sweden’s greatest living composer Tommie Haglund. In 2018 I attended a concert reviewed here as part of that Festival where Gustafsson directed a searing performance of Haglund’s great Hymnen an die Nacht alongside a Sibelius Symphony No.2 of genuine authority and stature. Qualities that he brings to these Bendix Symphonies.
To quote the CD cover Victor Bendix “was a complex figure in Danish music, central but at the same time an outsider”. His personal life – something outside the scope of this review – is worthy of a TV soap opera but by his dates alone 1851-1926 he straddles 75 years of musical upheaval and change. In crude terms he was born the year of the premiere of Schumann’s Rhenish Symphony (the same year as Vincent D’Indy) and died the year of Leoš Janáček’s Sinfonietta and Puccini’s Turandot which in turn were a full thirteen years after The Rite of Spring. In terms of Bendix’s own musical career and development two elements seem key. Aged just fifteen he enrolled at the newly opened Copenhagen Conservatory studying with Niels W Gade. Although Gade’s own attractive music is essentially conservative, the roster of Scandanavian pupils he taught and influenced aside from Bendix is impressive; Edvard Grieg, Carl Nielsen, Louis Glass, Elfrida Andrée, Otto Malling, August Winding and Asger Hamerik for starters.
There is an impression that Gade permitted his students a degree of extra expressive freedom than those studying at the Germanic centres of Leipzig and Berlin. The list of students above is striking for the individuality of the mature works they produced. Following the completion of his studies, Bendix worked as a répétiteur at Copenhagen’s Royal Theatre and then on a scholarship travelled to Germany where he was present at the laying of the foundation stone of Wagner’s Festival Theatre in Bayreuth. Again, I hear a sense of theatricality and Wagner as musical influences. As répétiteur he worked on the first Danish productions of Lohengrin and Der Meistersinger while later in life he directed the first performances of Tristan. But as presented here, he is not a slavish Wagner acolyte but a composer who responded to the harmonic and expressive freedom the older composer’s music represented. Given this natural dramatic sense, as well as a genuine melodic gift, curious to see that he did not appear to write any operas himself.
The two symphonies offered here make for a very effective and contrasting coupling. Symphony No.1 in C major Op.16 is a bold confident work full of the certainties that a talented composer in his mid-twenties could produce. The Symphony No.3 in A minor Op.25 [thirteen years but only nine opus numbers later] shares a key signature but little else with its youthful counterpart. The Symphony No.1 has a sub-title “Fjeldstigning” which Google and the danacord version translates as “Mountain Climbing”. Dacapo opt for the slightly more ambiguous “Ascension” which for me at least has religious connotations that I am not sure apply here. The danacord booklet includes in full the poem by Holger Drachmann that shares this title although it is not completely clear whether the poem inspired the symphony or vice versa. Whatever the truth of that this is a highly Romantic poem with almost a Nietzschian hero striding ever upwards; “You towering mountain, it is of course the weak you strengthen; at the top I drink of ether’s eternal springs….” or “Then a hymn of love for life will roll its billowing thunder about the mountains…” are just two brief excerpts from its hot-house verse. In fact it is probably wise that this new release does not reference the poetic work since there seems to be little if any correlation between the poetic excess and the less extravagant but still highly effective symphonic writing.
The work is in four movements running to 34:07 and for all the florid words it conforms perfectly well to standard symphonic form with a dramatic first movement, an atmospheric and effective Notturno – Allegro Vivace scherzo, a March solenne acting as the slow movement before a dancing Allegro animato finale. The formal balance of the symphony works well too but for me the most striking qualities – and this applies to both works – are a ‘fresh-air’ quality to the melodies that are in turn supported by harmonies that while hardly revolutionary have enough unconventional and unexpected twists and turns to prevent the weight of Germanic academe making them stolidly predictable. For sure the Wagner of the earlier operas – Lohengrin sprang to mind before I read of the involvement with that work mentioned previously – is present but more in the way the older composer writes noble even heroic melodies for brass with string and wind counterpoints providing a glittering accompaniment. In the first movement around 9:10 there is a rather glorious peroration led by the brass over tremolando strings that has a theatrical heroism to it that is both effective and impressive. As an aside – this is a passage where direct comparison between this new version and the hard-working Omsk PO shows how completely surpassed the older version is.
Although there is no sense in which this symphony is intended to be programmatic there are passages in every movement which seem implicitly illustrative. The Dacapo liner outlines the various motifs representing “striving”, “ideal” and “despair” that Bendix uses as structural mottos (rather than Wagnerian leitmotifs) to represent the composer’s struggle to achieve his ultimate artistic goals. Because of Bendix’s natural flair for melody these motifs are recognisable for the listener even early on in their acquaintance with this music. Perhaps even more striking though is the distinct sense – referenced by writers about this composer – that this music provides a stylistic link between the mid-century Romanticism of Gade and the nascent modernism of a young Carl Nielsen. Another feature which separates Bendix from many of the worthy-but-forgotten 19th Century composers is his certain touch for orchestration. All four of his symphonies can be followed on IMSLP which show he deploys a very standard Romantic orchestra – double wind, 4 horns, standard trumpets, lower brass, strings and limited timpani and percussion. The only ‘novelties’ are a deep-toned tam-tam in Symphony No.1 and a prominent harp part. The latter was unusual for a symphony at the time of its composition – perhaps another Wagnerian influence. But the result across both works is something that while not revolutionary or extreme in any way does sound fresh and imaginative.
Again, fresh and imaginative are descriptions equally applicable to the performances here from Gustafsson and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra. Interesting to note that metronome markings in the score are not slavishly followed with the tendency to allow the music to flow forward slightly more than the markings would suggest. That said Bendix does not help with some contradictory indications – the opening of Symphony 1 is marked Adagio ma non troppo qualified by a slow metronome marking of crochet/quarter note = 42. Sensibly Gustafsson follows the spirit of the “non troppo” rather than the potentially leaden metronome value. But the real qualities of these performances are the way the beauty and elegance of the writing is revealed. The orchestra plays with poise or power as required and likewise the interpretation allows the music to unfurl in an unforced but wholly convincing manner. Important to say that the climaxes retain an imposing power and impact. This performing style is what reinforces the attractive appeal of this music. Nine performances during Bendix’s lifetime including one by the Berlin Philharmonic no less and another conducted by Nielsen in 1921 would suggest a work whose strengths and appeal were recognised. Quite why – aside from a couple of recordings – it has not been played in public since 1929 – is all but unbelievable.
If Symphony No.1 in C major Op.16 is essentially a confident work with its emotional arc clearly defined in an ultimately fairly conventional manner; meet the hero, hero’s struggles and ultimate triumph, then Symphony No.3 in A minor Op.25 is a more complex piece both technically and emotionally. Although slightly longer – here 35:37 – it is now in three movements with an opening Fantasie and closing Elegie of roughly equal length framing a central Scherzo appassionato. This work was written in the years immediately after Gade’s death. Gade had so dominated the Danish musical scene that although his loss was greatly mourned at the same time his passing provided opportunities for the next generation of musicians to assume roles and posts he had filled for so long. Bendix was overlooked for any of these roles – without further elaboration the dacapo liner tantalisingly references “the unbearable side of his personality” as being decisive in such omissions. So while the third symphony may not have an explicit intended programme it does not seem like too much of an assumption to hear in its pensive, less superficially assured writing a composer re-evaluating his personal and professional position.
The very opening emerges from a forlorn misty landscape – quite different from the craggy certainties of No.1. Where in the sweeping writing of the earlier work the power and ensemble strength of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra impressed here it is the expressive warmth of the string playing that pays dividends once more revealing Bendix’s skill as a melodist. Given that the work was written in the 1890’s it also becomes more evident that Bendix is essentially a conservative albeit a rather individual one. The central scherzo has the sub-title Bunte Bilder [Colourful Pictures] which the liner rather neatly characterises as “a restless movement which seeks to sweep worries away with hectic creativity”. I was passingly reminded of moments in Bruckner scherzi where the shade of Schubert stamps in heavy rustic boots. Certainly the mood of forced jollity is interesting and again very well projected here. The most striking part of the work is the closing third movement which apparently Bendix was rather proud out but the audience at the premiere confused by. Without the utter nihilism of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony it charts a similar path of weary despair. Apart from a powerful climax at almost the exact centre point of the movement – out of which another memorable and impassioned string melody emerges – the music sinks away to ultimate resignation. That said – and somewhat undermining the “all hope lost” narrative – the work ends in a warm and unequivocal A major. For one last time the warmth of the recording, the finesse of the playing and the sensitivity of the conducting makes this a truly impressive and indeed moving conclusion.
As should be clear by now, the stature of this new recording reveals the music as having a power and quality previously barely hinted at. Bendix might not be as quirkily individual a voice in the world of Scandinavian symphonies as Langaard or Ture Rangström – both were a good generation later of course – but in his own right these are works that deserve to be heard and certainly enjoyed. So a disc to be very warmly received, especially with the news that Dacapo plan to release a companion disc containing the other two Bendix symphonies. This is made all the more enticing with the prospect of that recording including an alternative ending to the Symphony No.4 based on the composer’s sketches which has not been previously recorded.
A rewarding and revelatory disc beautifully performed.
Nick Barnard
Previous review: Jim Westhead (October 2024)
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