Bernard Zweers - Symphony No. 3 "To My Fatherland" (1886-c.1890)

Bernard Zweers (born Bernardus Josephus Wilhelmus Zweers) (18 May 1854 in Amsterdam – 9 December 1924 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch composer and music teacher.

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Symphony No. 3 "To My Fatherland" (1886–90 ca., autograph is dated 1893-11-2)
Dedication: Willem Kes (1856-1934)

1. In Neerlands Wouden (In the Dutch forests) (Matig - Con moto) (0:00)
2. Scherzo. Op het Land (In the country) (Vroolijk, A major) (14:15)
3. Aan het Strand en op Zee (On the beach and at sea) (Langzaam, F minor) (29:17)
4. Ter Hoofdstad (At the capital) (Zeer matig - Sneller) (44:56)

Het Residentie Orkest conducted by Hans Vonk
rec. 24-26 August 1977, Nieuwe Kerk, The Hague.

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The Third Symphony (1887-1889) was to become by far Zweers' most famous work. Its large scale prohibited it from being performed very often and made publication expensive (the publisher A.A. Noske experienced a great loss as sales were poor), but the work was, and is, regarded as a milestone in the development of Dutch music, combining folk tunes with a lyrical description of Dutch landscapes. It was therefore unavoidable that Wagenaar should use it as an example of 'typical' Dutch music.

In 1907, the Leiden professor Petrus Blok published the last part of his History of the Dutch People, dedicated to the arts. However, he totally ignored music, claiming Dutch music did not possess any 'national character'. The composer Johan Wagenaar published a rebuttal, in which he claimed that 'true' Dutch music could be characterised by a 'simple, spirited or firm melody, by a sense of the cosy and quietly sensitive, a sharp rhythm and, finally, a sense of humour'. Wagenaar named two works as an example: Peter van Anrooy's Piet Hein Rhapsody, an orchestral pot-boiler based on a popular song about the seventeenth century Dutch naval hero Piet Hein and Bernard Zweers' Third Symphony, subtitled 'To My Fatherland'. Indeed, Zweers could be said to be the most overtly nationalistic of all Dutch composers. Not in the sense that, like so many other European composers, he based his music exclusively on folk music, but more in his exploitation of national themes.

However, there is a strange dichotomy in Zweers' ideas about music. On the one hand, he strived to develop a specifically Dutch brand of music, free from foreign influence. For instance, his vocal music only employs Dutch-language texts, and when it has a programme, that is frequently inspired by Dutch themes: Rembrandt, Vondel's Gijsbrecht van Aemstel, Dutch landscapes, and so forth. His aim was the greater good of Dutch art, because "Never will art get a foothold with a people, when it uses a foreign language in song, or when it takes in art by means of foreign tongues". On the other hand, the German influences in his music are undeniable. His Second Symphony is thoroughly Wagnerian; his Third gave him the epithet 'the Dutch Bruckner'. One cannot imagine Zweers much appreciating that honour (and it really is undeserved as well, since the only Brucknerian thing about the work is its length).

Review by Bob Barnett:
The Zweers is a symphony of Brucknerian length across four graphically titled movements. These are: I In the Dutch forests; II In the country; III On the beach and at sea; IV At the capital. In this work Zweers has come a long way from the heavily Germanic orientation of the first two symphonies. He now deploys a brilliant palette of poetic ideas and colouristic devices. There’s more than a dash of passionate Tchaikovsky here, a flurry of Rimsky there. The effect sometimes recalls Louis Glass’s much later Fifth Symphony and the colouristic tone poems of Glazunov (The Sea and The Forest) and Ludolf Nielsen. There’s some simply glorious writing for the brass and the last movement harbours plenty of glowing examples which also give off a pleasingly grating bite. I had wondered if it would be all rather suite-like but there is a symphonic steel to Zweers’ writing which makes this more than a merely well-crafted pictorial indulgence. This is a symphony of lavish duration but of well conceived and executed ideas deployed within their span for potential pleasure and no further.

This will appeal to those who love their nationalist programme symphonies with a Tchaikovskian accent.

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