Whettam’s uncompromising approach to symphonic form has previously gone unrepresented on disc. This 1980 broadcast of his ‘largest and most ambitious’ symphony receives belated recognition, while raising more questions than it provides answers.
Sinfonia intrepida, inspired by the war-inflicted devastation of Europe and by a sense of the human spirit renewing itself out of the ashes of civilisation, took shape over more than a decade leading up to its premiere in 1977. Several distinct motifs ensure continuity at an immediately perceptible level: the forceful opening G on violins and horns, juxtaposed with a triplet idea on flutes and oboes, generate much of the music’s thematic substance; a variant of the yearning ‘Tristan’ chord underlies much of the harmonic and tonal ambiguity, on the way to the gritty C major rhetoric of the closing bars.
Impressive in its conviction and largeness of scope, the work lacks the inevitability of symphonists as diverse as Simpson or Gerhard. Formal sections within movements proceed almost episodically, an effect heightened by their relative extremes of dynamics and scoring. The overall impression is of a symphony in spirit but not in intrinsic coherence. For all their stylistic divergence, both Bax and, nearer our own time, MacMillan in his Vigil Symphony, exemplify this.
As a statement of considerable emotional integrity, Sinfonia intrepida’s impact is undeniable. Mackerras’s powerfully controlled if occasionally rough-edged account has transferred well to CD, with background hiss a minimal distraction. This deserves investigation by anyone convinced that the symphony, like post-war European civilisation, can still rise phoenix-like from the embers of its past