Although best known for his film music, William Alwyn composed five symphonies (among other concert works). Symphony No. 1 unsurprisingly marries symphonic form to an engaging dramatic narrative. The first movement’s slow, quiet introduction is pregnant with anticipation of the conflict to come, while the moving Adagio features one of those irresistibly hummable movie-style tunes. And connoisseurs of classic film cannot help but conjure cinematic images as they listen to Alwyn’s triumphant, brassy Allegro jubilante finale. But even without such associations, the First is a fine symphony in its own right.
The three-movement Symphony No. 3 is even more compelling. Alwyn states that he used a “new kind of 12-note system”, but the resulting music is certainly not atonal. Indeed, much of it has a modal quality similar to Vaughan Williams–a similarity that extends to the music’s formal plan, warlike character, and sometimes even the orchestration (the brass writing in the first movement, and the woodwind/string interplay of the finale’s “scherzo” section)–all of which are reminiscent of that composer’s Sixth Symphony. But Alwyn’s own voice predominates, and the symphony is enjoyable for its powerfully argued rhetoric and taut thematic construction. Conductor David Lloyd-Jones certainly believes in this music, as he demonstrates in these winning performances with the excellent Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Naxos provides first-rate sound.
