When a composer in 1919 writes an hour-long, post-Romantic symphony in three large movements scored only for double winds (plus contrabassoon), horns, trumpets, timpani, and strings (but no trombones or tuba), he’s either a visionary genius or a masochist. Swiss composer Fritz Brun (1878-1939), on evidence here, was no genius. The music lurches from Brahms to Sibelius to Bruckner and back, with little sense of shape or focus and no forward momentum whatsoever. The finale, in particular, seems completely at a loss as to what to do next. It meanders from one enervated episode to the next and then suddenly perorates with a few tonic/dominant clichés and simply stops.
The central variations (on an Italian tune) begin promisingly, but the formulaic alternations between strings and winds quickly become tiresome and the music concludes with an eight-minute long adagio that has a few intriguingly mysterious moments and then just keeps on going, and going, and going, well past the point where most will have stopped listening. Brun opens the piece with a snarl, sort of like Sibelius’ Fourth with an extra dollop of angst, but it’s all downhill from there. The Moscow Symphony Orchestra plays bravely and Adriano clearly believes in the work, but then people believe in all kinds of strange things, never mind Fritz Brun’s Third Symphony. The sonics are fine, but it’s really a lost cause.
