Dora Pejačević's Symphony in F# minor; Croatia's very first symphony!

00:00:00

John Banther: I'm John Banther, and this is Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. This week, I'm joined by WETA Classical's Evan Keely, and we are talking about the first symphony by a Croatian composer, Dora Pejačević. Her Symphony in F- sharp Minor is quite a first too. It is a large work, and we explore the specific sounds that she creates in part because of how and where she grew up. We also look at how her experience serving in World War I affected the symphony. We show you what to listen for and we point out moments that look to the past and to the future.

Okay, Evan, we have here the first symphony, or sometimes as it's described, the first modern symphony by a Croatian composer, Dora Pejačević. She completed this in 1917 during World War I, and it's quite a first symphony from a country. It's not something we see all too often here when we're talking about countries like France or Germany or England and so on. While I've had some Croatian friends and I've played with some Croatian people, our assistant program director, Zena, she performed in Zagreb as a soloist with their own military band, but we never thought about early Croatian orchestral music who wrote their first symphony. I mean Evan, I would not have guessed that would've been in 1917.

00:01:23

Evan Keely: There's so much that there is to learn. I'm at the beginnings of learning about Dora Pejačević and about Croatian music in general. So, yeah, there's a whole world to discover here, and this symphony is a great place to start.

00:01:37

John Banther: It certainly is, and we can look real quick at her life for a moment. Born Maria Theodora Paulina Pejačević, and we remember her now by the name she preferred Dora. She was born in Budapest in 1885 to a, seems to be, well- to- do aristocratic family. Evan, tell us about this.

00:01:56

Evan Keely: So her father was of the House of Pejačević, which is a Croatian aristocratic family. They trace their roots back to at least I think the 14th century. Her mother was Hungarian and she also came from an aristocratic family on that side. So, we often remember Dora Pejačević as a Croatian- Hungarian composer. That is in fact an accurate way to describe her. They lived in various places. They were a wealthy family. They had an estate in the Croatian town of Nasice, so they spent a lot of time there in Croatia. But frankly, Dora is someone who seems to have really traveled around quite a lot throughout Europe, and she and her family and her friends frequented European capitals.

They spent a lot of time in Germany and Austria and Hungary and Croatia, and in what's now we think of as the Czech part of Europe. So, this is a multilingual, multicultural family, and a group of people that she's a part of. She was very sophisticated. She was really a very dynamic person intellectually and I think spiritually even. You really see that reflected in her music and in the way she lived her life, which sadly was not very long. She died at the age of 37. So, we can think of her like we think of composers like Mendelssohn or Mozart or Schubert who didn't live to see 40 years of age. She was 37 when she died in 1923. She actually died of a postpartum infection after giving birth to her only child.

Even though she moved in very sophisticated circles, not only in the musical world, but in the literary world, in the artistic world, she's not associated with a particular composer. She studied music formally in Zagreb and in Munich, but she never took a degree. There's not this one or two composers we can think of. We don't think of Pejačević as, " Oh, she studied with so- and- so." She had a lot of influences, and as we get into this symphony that she wrote, John, we'll be discovering by listening as well as thinking about and talking about her life, what some of those influences were. But she was also a very original composer.

00:04:17

John Banther: She sounds very cosmopolitan and I think you're right. You hear a lot of these different things come together in her music. Also, during World War I, she served as a paramedic, and we're going to get into that a little bit more later on and how it actually relates to this symphony. But jumping into the first movement from the start, there is a very big serious sound from this. It sounds very, very imposing. It sounds big in the sounds of, if we think of other composers who came before, like Tchaikovsky and Dvorak of the late 20th century, you hear those sounds here, but also, it sounds very early 20th century too.

00:05:01

Evan Keely: Yeah. One of the things that's fascinating about this is she's one of these composers for whom the intersection of romanticism and modernity is this real tension. You hear the influence of romantic, the romantic style certainly in this symphony and in other works that she composed, but there's also this reaching for something new and you really hear that tension in this music. You hear that exploring some new musical language here. She's really thinking deeply about how to make a serious musical statement.

I think just as an individual, but also as a woman composer at a time where even in 1917, a lot of people still think women should just be writing parlor music if they should be writing at all. She's also making an assertion, I think, as a Croatian composer doing something. As we're saying, it's regarded as the first modern Croatian symphony. I get a sense that she's very conscious of that, and this is the statement she wants to make within that realm, this Andante Maestoso that opens up this symphony.

00:06:08

John Banther: The way she creates tension and then how she releases that tension is really something to look out for in this symphony. I think whenever you find a new composer or a composer from a different country, for example, then you're used to listening how they do transitions or how they build tension and release is something to look out for. I like how she does it here with horns, sighing in the background, that sigh, of course, a musical device that came around 170 years earlier used here to its full effect and it really feels like a release. We have a line that feels like it's very twisting, almost like it's just a fragment of a line that's being passed around in this opening andante.

Then it comes into full view when we go into the faster tempo, Allegro Con Moto. But the contrast here from the slower to a faster tempo, it's not as strong as you might assume with all the other symphonies that you hear from 100 years before. Strong contrast from the slow to the fast. Here's the intro. Now let's get going. Here it just happens. When I'm listening to this moment and further, Evan, it feels like when you visit a new city for the first time and you're taking that taxi ride downtown or whatever, you've been in a city before, but these are different surroundings. It feels different. It feels the same. You catch a glimpses of things you recognize like, oh, that's their drug store or this restaurant.

00:07:43

Evan Keely: You don't pass into the downtown in this symphony through a palatial looking gate. You gradually come from the airport and there's more and more interesting buildings over the minutes that you're traveling and you realize finally like, " Oh, here we are. We're downtown. Look at this amazing architecture and look at these interesting people walking on the streets and so forth." We slip into the Allegro. It's almost unnoticeable. I had to listen a couple of times before I realized, " Oh, that's where the tempo change is. Okay, now we're in the Allegro. Now the movement is really strong." Okay, wow. She just almost deceived me and lulled me into this sense of not really knowing where I am, but really wanting to be where I am and to explore this new city, as you were saying.

00:08:28

John Banther: It builds off of this idea, and I think we can look at some of the instruments being featured here. She really treats the winds in a way that I love. We have English horn, bassoon, oboe, and flute. It feels like she's treating them specifically here like another string section that are passing lines to each other constantly on top of each other, almost running into each other, and it feels like she's treating almost like another string section as opposed to a decorative wind section. Maybe I'm reading into things there, but I get that feeling as I'm listening to her music.

00:09:04

Evan Keely: She clearly knows how to write with the different colors of the different instrumental groups.

00:09:12

John Banther: She does it beautifully with some sequences in the brass that lead us to a lush moment with the horns and then very lush strings that take that over again. The tension that she creates, the releases she creates from that, and then the lush sounds that she has here, it is actually what you were saying in terms of you are lulled into things before you really recognize you are there.

00:09:46

Evan Keely: You get swept away in this emotional... There's this emotional sweep to this section here, and I'm mindful of 1917 is an era in which a composer like Puccini is really at the height of his fame and powers. There's an operatic quality to this moment. There's this lushness that reminds me a little bit of Puccini.

00:10:09

John Banther: Something else that she does that I think we find other composers doing later is maybe what we can describe as a loosely early Hollywood sound. You hear things, especially when she's having a lush thing happening, you hear, " Oh, this sounds like what Eric Korngold was doing later or even John Williams today." You hear stuff and it's like, " Oh, he really was digging into these transitionary times in the 1910s, like Eric Korngold and other composers too."

00:10:39

Evan Keely: There's a theatricality to this music as well. I don't mean that disparagingly. On the contrary, there's a sense of drama. There's an almost cinematic quality to this symphony. Mentioning Eric Korngold, of course, a great film composer who two decades after this is really going to be active in that scene literally in Hollywood. There's a stylistic similarity that we hear in this symphony.

00:11:04

John Banther: I guess Eric Korngold coming from Austria, right? I mean, that's not 2, 000 miles away from Croatia.

00:11:10

Evan Keely: Yeah. Yeah.

00:11:11

John Banther: We get to the biggest moment in the movement so far halfway through, and it feels like it's overflowing. This is what I love also about her music and these big moments where it feels like just this big body of water, a huge cup just overflowing. I love how the cello takes it afterwards, and this is a moment, especially how she lets the music relax, how she gets out of these moments. It feels quite French to me.

00:11:46

Evan Keely: Yeah, there's definitely a French sound to that. There's a Beethovenian quality to this too. There's an economy. She takes these little thematic fragments and there's a lot of sequences. You and I talked about Bruckner not too long ago, John, and how he was able to use repetition and small bits of thematic material in this repetitive way that rather than being monotonous, really builds this sense of drama and a sense of direction. Pejačević, I think, is also really skilled in that same aspect.

00:12:17

John Banther: Another thing to listen for in a composer you either are new to or they're from a place that you aren't familiar with is to listen to how they build up the sound in the background, how they take you from a small place to a really, really big place. We see things in her music like a big timpani roll that creates that big rumbling foundation, a theme in the brass that is very striking. What I love specifically with her is how she uses the strings and winds like a storm blustering up and down. We hear that of course in the century before in big ways from composers like Wagner and Liszt, but maybe more so in a suggestive or theatrical way. This feels more realistic. It's like the difference between if you think about a film that uses a lot of matte painting versus filming exactly on the location.

Hopefully, some people understand where I'm going there with that, but she's doing so much more descriptively in the music and how she uses the winds and strings to bluster up and down. Then Evan, we get to another moment to talk about a woodwind instrument. It's one that I think sets up some other things in the symphony, and that is she uses the bass clarinet and she uses interesting choices at times in using winds to create a very intimate moment. Here it's interesting because it almost sounds like it was actually written for B- flat clarinet, like the normal clarinet you would hear, and maybe higher up like an octave with this nice background from the bassoons, but putting it in bass clarinet, it adds a new dimension, a new sadness before other winds take over.

Something else she does with the winds, Evan, is something you see other composers do at times, and that is create something like harmonium or a street organ sound. It makes you think, what was she also hearing in her day- to- day life? Because even when I was living in the Netherlands, you'd hear these street organs semi- frequently in the 2000s, 2010s.

00:14:33

Evan Keely: Well, again, given her very cosmopolitan background and the circles in which she moved, I can't imagine she wasn't exposed to a great many different varieties of sounds, both from the most complex compositions of the day to, like you say, somebody on street or whatever or things in a salon or at a music hall. I really get the sense of her as an astute listener, and she's able to integrate what she's been hearing in these different places where she's finds herself, where she inserts herself very, very assertively. She takes that imagination and is able to feed it back to us in this really original and striking way in the symphony.

00:15:20

John Banther: I like that. It sounds like it's the idea of well, she's taking in everything as she's going to all of these different places and experiences, not just like Bach holed up in a room riding cantata after cantata after cantata, maybe with screaming kids in the background.

00:15:37

Evan Keely: Yeah. Well, screaming makes me think of her experience as a paramedic in World War I, and she's writing the symphony in some ways perhaps is a response to that experience. She's clearly a very sensitive person. Of course, anyone is going to have a very difficult time integrating those kinds of horrors into their life. The war comes to an end. The war ends and she starts writing the symphony. She finishes it in 1917. She makes some revisions for a 1920 performance, and she's trying to make sense of this experience that the world has been through this unbelievable trauma. I can't even imagine what she's experienced as a paramedic.

I mean, you think of the horrors, the sounds that she heard and the sights that she had to see and the smells. So, she's really trying to, I think, make sense of her experience. This symphony, I think, is a very personal statement. So, when we have these very, really interesting instrumental choices, for instance, she's trying to find a way to articulate with this many layers of her experience. One of the things that's so compelling to me about the symphony is how she's able to do that, again with her use of thematic material, her use of really interesting and in some cases unusual instrumentation, the formal structure of the piece. You feel like there's a lot going on.

00:17:06

John Banther: There is a lot going on, and as people might guess, this is a big long first movement. We are still in it and there is so much more even to get into it. I think with a lot of the things that we've said with a couple of listens, you really start picking up on some of these things like how she uses instruments. Also, contrabassoon on some of the entrances are really beautiful.

How she sets up low instruments, playing like a nice stretching line in a way that lets the higher sounding instruments just rest on top and not have to push through anything as well. Another moment that calls back to what I was saying before in terms how they build up a section, listen out for that, we get to a point that is really one of my favorite points in the entire symphony, especially the first time I heard it. Lines are crossing this way and that way, and you feel you are getting pushed to this huge moment and you are deceived. It's not what you thought it was going to be.

00:18:20

Evan Keely: Yeah, it feels deceptive in a way that doesn't leave you feeling cheated. It's building up to this moment and then you feel like there's going to be this big resolution and then something else happens. Rather than feeling like, " Oh, I'm disappointed that it didn't go where I thought it was," I just find myself even more interested in what she's trying to say.

00:18:41

John Banther: It brings to mind for me something you mentioned, and that is her being in World War I, this massive change and massive shift in a moment. I mean, it feels quite existential and terrifying.

00:18:55

Evan Keely: There's an off- balance feeling in this symphony in her music. There's a sense of something isn't quite right. Rather than it being something that makes me want to look away, it makes me want to lean in and understand what it is that she's trying to say about her own confusion, her own uncertainty. Yet there's also this sense of this is someone with a very decisive personality, someone who believes in herself. How does someone like that make sense of the senseless?

00:19:27

John Banther: I love what you're saying. They're making sense of the senseless. Just to recap this movement here and some things that we've heard, she creates this massive sound within the orchestra that's balanced when it needs to be, maybe unbalanced when it needs to be, and how she uses those lower instruments to let the higher instruments sit on the sound. Also, lots of repetition, almost more than I would even like, but it just works, especially how she uses the fragments. Also, I love, Evan, the lush sound that she's bringing at different moments throughout the first movement.

00:20:02

Evan Keely: Yeah, lush is a great word. This, of course, as you were saying, John, is characteristic of the music of this era. In her music and in this symphony in particular, it never feels excessive. It never feels self- indulgent. It's just right.

00:20:20

John Banther: We can stop for a moment and think about her time in World War I. As you mentioned, Evan, she was a paramedic and that sounds like the worst position you can be in besides the person in front of you actually dying in the conflict. This had a profound effect on her and her music. After this experience, she wrote this. In fact, I am only physically present. Everything I feel as living and experiencing floats above the present and the visible and in a deep and beautiful infinity. I see in the mirror of my feelings, the driving force in the form of beloved beings. Thousands of memories emerge like water lilies on the smooth surface of a lake. In this infinity, feelings are followed by thoughts.

There I contemplate my best for all that is good and great grows from love. Soaring into that most invisible world of innermost being, I become completely my own self. That self, which then feels too filled with itself and that distant, heavenly seclusion, seeks expression, seeks relief from that high mental pressure, which is in itself a kind of enthusiasm and that liberation is achieved when a composition is born. That is quite a statement, Evan, and some very sad aspects to it. Of course, you read about this from World War I and afterwards when she says, " I'm only physically present. What I experience and feel, that floats above somewhere."

00:21:50

Evan Keely: Yet she is asserting in this statement, a refusal to be defeated by the horrors of what she had to go through and what everyone in the world had to go through in the course of this cataclysm that is World War I, which is I think difficult for us a little over a hundred years later to contemplate just what a shock it was globally. People had lived through this unbelievable devastation, just the ridiculous, absurd, horrifying loss of life. She was literally there, like you said. A soldier in the foxhole is maybe the worst place to be, but the paramedic who has to tend to the wounded right after the poison gas has floated through or the shell has gone off. That was Dora Pejačević, and she's really trying to make sense of this experience.

One of the things I think she's saying in this statement you just read, John, and in this symphony and in all of her music, is that she won't be bowed down by those horrors that she is integrating them into her experience. She's not pretending it didn't happen. She's not just trying to forget it, but she's also aware of how it has shaped her. She feels that if anything, I think she's reaffirming what is of greatest value, and she says this thing about all that is good and great flows from love. How do you make sense of that as a listener? As you're listening to a symphony and you think to yourself, " Okay, this is a composer who believes that all that is good at great flows from love," and yet somehow I hear that in this symphony. I can hear that in a way that's not articulable, that this is the statement she's making in this symphony.

00:23:38

John Banther: I like what you're saying there, Evan, and I think I am in agreement with that. There is something in here that is intrinsically different. Looking at the second movement, it opens with this English horn solo that goes on and on, and it's the basis of the movement. Actually, from a recording of this symphony in the CD liner notes, Pamela Blevins wrote, " The plaintive call of a solo cor anglais, English horn, invites one to enter a labyrinth of emotion, filled with nostalgia and sadness, reflections of the composer's yearning for comfort and peace in a world torn apart by war."

I think a labyrinth of emotion is a good description, I think, because you hear these long lines. They take you down different twists and turns. It feels dark, it feels foggy, and you're finding or you're seeing just maybe lost people at the ends of these paths. It feels quite existential.

00:24:45

Evan Keely: John, you and I were talking about this before recording this episode, and you were saying there's a Prokofiev- esque quality to this melody and to this movement, and I think that's true. He's also a composer. Sergei Prokofiev is one of many composers of this era who are really trying through their music to make sense of the horror and confusion of the era. There's this honesty of emotion that's being expressed here in this slow movement of Pejačević's Symphony that I find so irresistible.

00:25:20

John Banther: Just as we have some of these beautiful lines close by, there's always darker ones. There's always this contrast or this juxtaposition of something light towards something dark. Not too long after this, we get to a desolate unique landscape, not too out of, I think, the context of what we've heard from her in terms of her experience in World War I, very desolate sounding. She built from this. We get to something almost like a respite, something very pastoral in the music, Evan.

00:26:03

Evan Keely: It seems to be there's a change of time signature here. It sounds like we were in 3/ 4, one, two, three, and then there's this 12/ 8 or 6/ 8, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup rhythm that comes in. Again, when we were talking about the first movement and the shift from the slow introduction to the allegro, you don't really notice it. You have, " Oh, look, we're at a different tempo now." This is a similar a thing where we're just suddenly find ourselves in new territory and maybe don't realize it right away.

Again, there's this use of repetition, but now she's using harmony, this new dimension to repeating passages with different harmonic inflections to generate a continued feeling of interest and movement. After that, we're building up to something. We're only halfway through the movement at this point, and she uses the timpani to help us to build to this massive... It feels like a climactic point about halfway through.

00:27:20

John Banther: Sometimes in the repetition, the change of instrument is what's being changed or brought out. We get back to a solo line from the beginning of the movement, but now in bass clarinet again, that not so cheerful sounding instrument sounds stoic.

00:27:51

Evan Keely: She keeps bringing that bass clarinet out. Again, as you said, John, it's an unusual instrument to be highlighted in this way, but when she does it, it just punctuates things with such... It's so compelling. You sit up in your seat like what's happening now.

00:28:09

John Banther: And then another solo instrument to bring back that returns, the English horn returns with a very interesting chord towards the end. It feels almost exactly out of Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra. This F- sharp minor diminished in the trombones that resolves to be minor. I love how she does that ending. Evan, as we look back on this movement, what really grabs me, what really informs my whole maybe idea of it is the labyrinth of emotions. We're going through different emotions and we're going through a labyrinth, sometimes backtracking maybe where we were in the music. I love how she does that.

00:29:11

Evan Keely: I love too this structure of this movement. There's a kind of ABA, like we have one section and there's a contrasting section, but the contrasting, the middle section doesn't quite evolve. It starts and then we're left with this sense of what might've been. Then we go back to earlier, the A section from the earlier in the movement, and there's again, this strange, this time signature shift that we don't quite notice. Again, everything feels like it's off- balance, and yet rather than feeling confused or lost ourselves as a listener, we want to go with her on the journey.

00:29:49

John Banther: We'll get into the next two movements and a little bit about the premiere right after this. So, she was writing this during World War I. Two movements were premiered in Vienna in 1918. Then she did some later reworking and revising on the Symphony and premiered it in full in 1920. Also, not too unusual, I think, at the time having plenty of composers during this time premiered parts of works or little bits of things, and then the whole thing came later after the war.

00:30:18

Evan Keely: Absolutely.

00:30:23

John Banther: So let's just jump into the third movement. It feels very characteristic, feels like you're being whisked away, and it's also the shortest movement of a symphony. We didn't mention that second movement, that's also the slow one we heard. That's also a very long movement.

00:30:38

Evan Keely: Yeah. This is a typical in terms of the structure, you have a fast first movement, a slow second movement, and then have a scherzo third movement, a fast three. This goes all the way back to Beethoven. So, she's taking that very traditional form and yet saying something very original with it. One of the things I find really interesting in this theme that we hear over and over again in this scherzo is this harmonic language of I'm not sure what's happening. It sounds a little bit like planing to me, which is a phenomenon in music, especially in this era.

Debussy used it a lot where you have these parallel harmonies moving in ways that are very untraditional for European music. Debussy was particularly revolutionary in his use of these parallel movements that sound " wrong" to an ear that's used to hearing music like Mozart for example. You have this almost this wrong note, this sense of a wrong note that sounds right in this movement that really is prominently displayed in a way that I find really exciting.

00:31:52

John Banther: That's building off of what you just said, Evan. She's going this traditional idea of this opening symphonic movement, a slow second, a scherzo third, and she's still bringing some of the ideas from that past. Yeah, there's a bit of humor in this scherzo in this joke, but she's doing in this new modern way.

00:32:11

Evan Keely: Yeah, it's edgy. There is some humor. There's even some levity, and yet there's also a... I don't know if sinister is the right word, but there's definitely-

00:32:25

John Banther: Like a trickster.

00:32:26

Evan Keely: Yeah, there's a darkness behind the smile of the joke. The joke is we're not sure if it's at our own expense or we should be laughing with. There's an edginess to this, an unsettled quality as we were saying earlier.

00:32:54

John Banther: This movement is unusual in my opinion, in that the biggest point in the movement happens towards the beginning. A minute and a half in, we get to the biggest build- up of this, and then it feels like she's using the rest of the movement to explain what just happened. Usually, you think, " Oh, this scherzo builds up, builds up, builds up into this big moment, and then we bring it down and then go to the next." But that's right towards the beginning. Then later on just a few minutes later, it comes down to a point that actually feels like the end of this scherzo. So, it could almost be just like three minutes long, but that's just all in the first a little bit and a lot more happens after.

00:33:39

Evan Keely: Another thing haven't talked about much, we've talked about her use of wind writing and how she writes for the strings. There's a lot of very interesting percussion writing in this symphony. There's a lot of percussion instruments, including a xylophone, which we hear really prominently in this scherzo. There's a really, I think, a 20th century sound to the sound world she creates with the percussion section in particular.

00:34:06

John Banther: You're right. It is so 20th century and so modern of that time, and it's in the percussion and it's so small. It's just the xylophone at certain parts that just change the whole color of it or even the glockenspiel at one point too. There is a very, very lush moment here still after that big open, and we still get a very lush sound and a lush texture and maybe more towards a delirious dance in a ball.

00:34:37

Evan Keely: Yeah, delirium is a good word to describe a lot of the feeling I have in this movement.

00:34:42

John Banther: Something you mentioned earlier, Evan, and that I think also applies here and other places is how she maybe more towards Beethoven in terms of being a rhythmic composer, all the rhythmic elements she has in her music as opposed to maybe a long melodic line you find in a Mozart symphony.

00:35:01

Evan Keely: Yeah, the rhythmic writing is certainly very dynamic, and she has a sense of how to create, as we were saying earlier about tempo changes and so forth, time signature changes that you don't notice right away, and also, in this scherzo in particular, we're going all the way back to, as you said, all the way back to Beethoven. This has always been usually a fast three, which is what she chooses to do. It's very traditional in that sense, and yet there's this sense of vitality that she infuses into it.

00:35:37

John Banther: So now we get into the finale of her symphony, which is a nice transition I think from the scherzo. It also sounds big and serious like the opening of her first movement. But this one, it's still going to be a mixed bag of emotions and one instrument to think about before I forget, listen for the horns throughout this movement. At times, it sounds like they're fighting for their lives in the background.

00:36:05

Evan Keely: Yeah. She really knows how to create tension and drama, especially with the horn section. This movement too really strikes me as Pejačević dies in 1923. As we were saying, John, she's at the cusp of that movement from romanticism to 20th century modernism. You hear that tension in this symphony. It really strikes me, especially the opening of this finale, we're still very much in the romantic vein. It really feels like a romantic symphony at this part, I think more so than some other places in the symphony. Yet it doesn't feel out of place. It doesn't feel inconsistent. It's just she's still authentically expressing herself in that milieu, in that vein, in a way that, like you said, the mixed bag of emotions I think is part of what makes it continues to engage our interest.

00:36:59

John Banther: There is another moment here that is just, to me, it feels like all the film composers were looking over her shoulder for a moment in time. We hear something that sounds very John Williams to me, especially how she harmonically goes from one thing to the next, but it has this sound that feels familiar today.

00:37:19

Evan Keely: Yeah. To me, this feels like romanticism at its height. Even the harmonic language here to me seems a little bit more restrained. There's a clarity to the harmonic language here that's maybe deliberately muddled in some other places in the symphony. There's maybe less fragmentation and more thematic clarity. There's a decisive quality. This is the final movement. We're going to just tell it like it is. That edginess is still present, but there's somehow for me, less ambiguity as we get to the finale.

00:37:56

John Banther: Another moment I want to talk about in terms of how she transitions in or out of something, that's something to hear for in a composer. How do we get from this idea or this atmosphere into the next thing? She does this moment here in an anxiety- inducing way, or it sounds very anxious because she gets back into the music with busy lines that overlap each other. It almost sounds like it's unnecessarily so. This is too much happening here.

Instead of letting the cello and bass sections speak on the moment they have, and then the trumpet and then horn, and then glockenspiel with maybe some winds for decoration, instead of those moments happening one after another to then slowly build, they're stepping on each other's toes. They're all over each other, and it adds a sense of urgency to it.

00:38:56

Evan Keely: Yeah, it doesn't sound chaotic or she doesn't know what she's doing, but yeah, there's definitely a confusion that happens here. As I was saying earlier, there's a clarity that we have at the beginning of the movement and then as we're getting into the developing the themes that she's presenting at the beginning of the finale, there's a sense of stepping on each other and crowding each other's space. Yet it creates a sense of excitement and urgency rather than just being chaotic.

00:39:25

John Banther: Not to keep mentioning like Hollywood or film music today, but there's another moment here that sounds like... I mean, I think I played a Star Wars game on Nintendo 64 that had this exact sound in the background because I thought of it immediately when I heard this. So, I really love the interesting and forward- looking timbre she's bringing into the music. Then Evan, we get to a point where we find ourselves in so many symphonies. It feels like, okay, we're here in the final minute or minute and a half of the symphony. It feels like you're on rails. We are headed straight to the scene of the crash or the scene of the ending really, so to speak, of final ascent or descent. I just love how she brings that out here.

00:40:33

Evan Keely: And then the final minutes, we have this headfirst sprint into this big F- sharp minor conclusion. We end where we started this, and also in the sense of we started with this sense of seriousness. The music has a serious tone, but there's also this sense of artistic seriousness as a personal integrity. Dora Pejačević as a composer is letting us know that she has something worthwhile to say. It ends on that serious note. That's that note of commitment, that note of self- awareness, that moment of insight. You come to the end of the symphony and you really feel like it was time well spent.

I didn't know this piece until fairly recently, and I've been listening to it many times. I really want to get my hands on a score and study it more. There's just a lot happening here. It's an exciting piece. It's a beautiful piece. It's a sophisticated piece, but it doesn't leave you feeling browbeaten or confused. But there's this fascinating forest of different things to explore. I want to just keep listening to this symphony and learning more about the music of Dora Pejačević, really fine composer.

00:41:58

John Banther: A forest of things to explore is a great point I think to make on this, Evan, because each time you listen, you're going to hear new and different things. Part of that is because there is so much going on in the music, almost the opposite of what we talked about in Beethoven's violin concerto, where it felt like there's no music here. Here, there's so much happening at once. It's going to take repeated listens. That's in contrast to, I think, a moment we had earlier where it was like there was less music going on, but it's very rewarding to hear it again and again and then maybe put it aside. I always tell people this whenever I do a talk or something, listen to whatever we're talking about here.

Enjoy the concert, and then set an alarm on your phone or whatever your calendar for two, three weeks later, listen to that symphony again and then listen to it again. You'll hear it differently. So, if you liked this symphony and you want to hear another work of Dora Pejačević, you can check out one I think that's really brilliant, her Phantasie Concertante for Piano and Orchestra, and I'll put a link on the show notes page to that. Okay, Evan. So, now it's time to get to our reviews from Apple Podcasts. What do we have?

00:43:10

Evan Keely: We've got a five- star review here from Finifinifini who says, " Hello. I'm a professional classical musician, and this is my favorite podcast on the subject. Keep up the great work. Your show is both educational and entertaining and very well- produced. Thank you." Well, thank you, Finifinifini. Keep listening and tell your friends. We'll keep it coming.

00:43:35

John Banther: Yes. Thank you so much for the five stars. Tell your friends, tell your non- musician friends too. If you want to write back and tell us what instrument you play, because I don't think I saw that, definitely let us know. Okay, well, thank you so much, Evan, for joining me, for all things on this great symphony by Dora Pejačević.

00:43:53

Evan Keely: Dora Pejačević, a wonderful composer who is worth knowing, exploring, and appreciating.

00:44:02

John Banther: Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode, visit the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org. You can send me comments and episode ideas to classicalbreakdown@ weta. org. If you enjoy this episode, leave a review in your podcast app. I'm John Banther. Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from WETA Classical.