Symphony in D minor (1942) Irgens-Jensen had already conceived the idea of writing what was to be his only purely orchestral symphony before the Second World War. In later life he did not want the symphony to be too closely associated with the war or with a literary ‘programme’. He probably felt that it touched on existential questions, but avoided giving a simplistic explanation of what it was ‘about’. Before the first performance in 1945, however, he allowed the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet to print a poem which, he said, ‘I wrote down (on 10 April 1940) at exactly the same time that the plan of the symphony became clear in my mind’. It was the day after the outbreak of war in Norway, and the title Dragsug (Maelstrom) is particularly striking. The poem is in three parts, and so—originally—was the symphony.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 23:20:12 +0000
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