Jones: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 11

Album review

Welsh composer Daniel Jones wrote mostly in tonal idioms (each of the first 12 of his symphonies takes a different note of the chromatic scale as a point of departure), but the flavor of his work is not conservative. He devised what he called a system of Complex Metres that was later adopted by German composer Boris Blacher. The two symphonies recorded here may not use that system intact, but they are filled with rhythmic shifts on which the thematic edifice is built. This album is part of a series on the Lyrita label that retrieves older British recordings, many of them live or from radio broadcasts; the enthusiastic commercial response to these has shown the depth of listener frustration at the long rule of the modernist nomenklatura, now broken. The program pairs one of Jones' weighty early symphonies with a later work in a more economical idiom; these later works, almost completely neglected, are well worth rediscovery. The Symphony No. 11, written in memory of the composer's friend George Froom Tyler, conveys a unique pensive mood within concise structural confines. Sample the three-and-a-half-minute finale, "Risoluto-Maestoso." The opening movement of the Symphony No. 2 is a good example of Jones' ability to keep a musical argument going across his shifting meters and moods. Recommended for anyone curious about the figure often considered the greatest Welsh symphonic composer, or about the vast body of music in traditional forms neglected in the late 20th century. Both works were performed by the BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra under Bryden Thomson in 1990, and the orchestra acquits itself well in what was probably, even for them, unfamiliar music.

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