Rubbra: Symphony No. 5, Op. 63

Album review

The English composer Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986) is one of those few and great individuals who litter the history of music, alongside Pancrace Royer, Alkan, Gottschalk, Ives, Varèse and others. They are deeply original loners whose music remains unclassifiable and mysterious.

The author of an extensive catalogue, Rubbra is above all the author of a cycle of eleven symphonies written under the influence of the English composers of the 16th and 17th centuries, without any concern to fit in with a style or language which would suit the fashions of his time. He writes long, rather lyrical themes in a simple polyphony without any clutter. A student of Gustav Holst, he also had a career as a pianist and lecturer at Oxford University. He is also the author of several books, including a biography of his master: Holst, a Monograph and a theoretical book on counterpoint, which he practiced assiduously in his works.

Rubbra left a major contribution to twentieth-century English orchestral music, such as Symphony No. 5, which remains perhaps his most performed work and was recorded on 14 and 15 December 1950 in the great Abbey Road studio by Sir John Barbirolli, the first conductor to have recorded a work by Rubbra, as part of an anthology of English music initiated by the British Council. This historic recording has had a real impact in raising the profile of Rubbra beyond the shores of the British Isles.

Symphony No. 5 remains Rubbra's most immediately accessible, and he was full of praise for Barbirolli's recording, which has been remastered remarkably for this new reissue. The great English maestro gives a profound vision, full of noble grandeur and melancholy. © François Hudry/Qobuz