Although Ernest Krenek, in his memoirs, offers a mildly programmatic description 
of the doom and gloom that hang over his 1923 Second Symphony, one does not need 
these words to walk away from this nearly hour-long work fairly crushed by the 
violence, tragedy, and, on occasion, utter longing that seem to have been 
directly translated from the composer's soul into a fairly advanced musical 
idiom. From the hushed, tightly chromatic celesta motif that opens the symphony 
to savage, fortissimo outbursts in the brass; from the simple, chordal figure 
that repeats itself achingly in the midrange strings starting at 4:54 in the 
second movement to the considerably more complex harmonic structures that 
definitely evoke those "dreadful exertions to break through the walls of the 
cave or the bars of the cage" described by the composer, this three-movement 
symphony communicates with unflagging intensity on an emotional level rarely 
matched in music. Yet the minor miracle here is that Krenek accomplishes this in 
an advanced musical idiom with which even the most relentless seekers of 
technical purity would have trouble finding fault. While described in Eckhardt 
van den Hoogen's diffuse program notes and by other writers as atonal, the 
musical idiom of Krenek's Second Symphony certainly does not adhere to the 
stricter orthodoxy of twelve-tone composing, and it strikes me that much of the 
Second Symphony's affective impact grows out of the free use of atonal devices 
in such a way that the listener never entirely forgets that, in the beginning, 
there was tonality.

Which brings me to another point. In his review of Takao Ukigaya's recording of 
Krenek's Third Symphony in Fanfare 19:1, Ben Pernick suggests some "prescient 
anticipations of Shostakovich." Absolutely. There is a work of incidental music 
for Goethe's Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit that Krenek composed in 1926 which, 
just about from start to finish, is a dead ringer for the satirical musical 
style that Shostakovich would begin writing a few years later. On the other 
hand, the Second Symphony, like the Third, reflects the same kind of molto 
serioso aesthetics that dominate most of Shostakovich's symphonies, and in many 
instances the musical means used to evoke this serious tone are remarkably 
similar in Krenek and Shostakovich. Note, as one example, certain of Krenek's 
textures for woodwinds and strings. And parts of the Krenek Second Symphony 
remarkably foreshadow moments in the Shostakovich Third, save that Krenek uses 
these devices with consummate skill and smoothness, whereas Shostakovich deploys 
them rather awkwardly. Shostakovich needed to move into a more conservative 
style to find a more convincing musical translation for his particular demons. 
It is a move for which Shostakovich has often been excoriated by those seekers 
of technical purity I refer to above. Yet, I ask, which of the two composers is 
it who has his symphonies performed in concert halls all over the world on an 
almost weekly basis? And which of these two composers almost never appears these 
days on concert programs? In the obvious answer, you have a major indictment of 
the hypocrisy of the musical establishment.

All of this is a shame, since the Krenek Second, precisely because it is so 
devastatingly effective on both a musical and an emotional level, is one of the 
great modern symphonies. In conducting the music, Takao Ukigaya generally 
matches, in his interpretation, the intensity Krenek built into every note of 
his music, and he elicits competent to expert playing from the Radio-
Philharmonie Hannover des NDR, which is no small feat for what sounds like an 
extremely difficult work to coordinate and execute. The recorded sound has 
remarkable clarity, definition, and depth while also offering a fairly resonant 
ambience that works particularly well for the music. This will make my 1996 Want 
List. Meanwhile, some musicologist out there should look into some of the 
possible reasons for the affinités secrètes between Krenek and Shostakovich.

  --Royal Brown