PAUL VON KLENAU Symphony No. 8 (World Premiere)

Klenau composed the opera Die Lästerschüle during the winter of 1924-5. This was a cheerful opera inspired by the Rococo, and when it was performed by Statsradiofonien (today the Danish National Symphony Orchestra) in the summer of 1942, Klenau had the idea of composing a new symphony ‘in olden style’, because, as recorded in his notebooks, he had an ‘impulse to do it’. It is the Rococo spirit from Die Lästerschüle that has been brought into a symphonic form: light, cheerful, playful. It is a symphony carried away by its ‘impulse’, a kind of exercise in the style of the old Baroque and Viennese classical masters which Klenau had, at other times, written about and given lectures on. Perhaps it is so much an exercise that the symphony was just for his own pleasure, as he didn’t try to have it performed or published.

Symphony No. 8 (1942) "In olden style"
I. Allegro vivace 0:00
II. Andante grazioso 4:23
III. Menuet 8:44
IV. Rondo. Allegro molto vivace 11:14

Singapore Symphony Orchestra
Hans Graf, Music Director
(Recorded on 17 Apr 2021 at the Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore. The use of masks, reduced orchestra and audience sizes are due to pandemic rules in force at the time of performance.)

In his notebooks, Klenau wrote: ‘in classical style, like a little Mozart symphony’, and elsewhere it says ‘Not 12-tone!’. In contrast to most of Klenau’s production, there is a key signature, stressing that the work is based on the major and minor modes. In its overall form, the work can put us in mind of a pastiche of an early Mozart symphony, with four short movements, but if we listen to the detail, there is much more in the music than just a stylistic exercise.

The first movement’s main theme is a good example of the way in which Klenau, within the framework of a conventional sonata form, plays with tonal relationships. The symphony appears to begin in D major, but already in the course of the first theme’s presentation, the piece moves away from this key. Klenau gives his style-exercise a new direction. The second movement’s Andante gracioso is built up of thematic elements that follow each other naturally, in an arch form that is characterized by a perpetuum mobile with repetitions and a continuous pizzicato in the strings. The movement is graceful in its simplicity. In the third movement, Klenau comes nearest to his Rococo model with a minuet in the French court style, with a distinctive use of the timpani. The fourth movement is a rondo with a characteristic playful main theme. In this movement, Klenau allows himself some freedom in relation to a conventional rondo, blending small abrupt shifts in the
metric structure and displacements in the sonic balance.

On the whole, the eighth symphony stands in contrast to the preceding seventh and the following
ninth symphony, which both bear the imprint of the twelve-tone system. Klenau’s eighth had been hidden so well that it had been forgotten: he gave the number 8 to its successor, number 9, a mistake that was only corrected when his wife, Margarethe Klimt, revised the list of her husband’s
compositions, and gave number eight its correct number.

Klenau produced works, nearly manically, until his death on 31 August 1946, but then he and his music disappeared from view in a kind of collective amnesia. It was only in the last decade of the last century that there was any attempt to rectify the omission, with concerts, an opera performance and recordings, making it possible to assess Klenau’s significance in Danish music history of the 20th century.

Klenau's Symphony No. 8 and other works were recorded by the Singapore Symphony and released on the Dacapo label. See https://dacapo-records.dk/en/news/pre... for details.

Cover photo: Nyhavn, København, Denmark - by Nick Karvounis/Unsplash