SPRING IS STRUNG

Sometimes a piece of music falls into your lap at just the right time of the year, providing a soundtrack that is just about harmonious with the elemental changes shifting all around you. To herald the current turbulent transition from winter to spring, I recently chanced upon Dvorak's Serenade for Strings in E Major (Argo) on vinyl conducted by that reliable musical gardener, Neville Marriner, who never fails to make things nice and tidy in the field of music. There's a lot to be said for those conductors who make little fuss and simply serve the music without excessive idiosyncratic interpretation. Mind you, I can't lie, there's also a lot to be said for the latter too. More about that subject, soon. (I'm looking at you Teodor Currentzis!)

The truth is, in regard to Dvorak's Serenade, there really isn't a lot of room for conductorly interpretation as the piece defines itself concisely without requiring much additional insight. It is as organic as the Folk music of Moravia and the rolling hills and dense forests of Bohemia, Dvorak's native country. There is also something about the form of serenades, miniatures and tone poems that seem so conclusively composed that there is not one note wasted or passage overwritten. There are not, as Schaffer's Emperor Joseph II accused Mozart of there being in one of his works, "too many notes". Pieces similar to Dvorak's Serenade include Elgar's own 'Serenade for Strings' and 'Introduction and Allegro' as well as Grieg's 'Last Spring' - a musical form that rarely outstays its welcome and often leaves you wanting many more notes.

I will say, however, that Dvorak is a funny one for me. As much as I love his 8th and 9th Symphonies and his beautiful cello concerto, I've pretty much ignored everything else in his canon and filed him under MOR composers. Is it perhaps because of my fixed childhood association with the classic Hovis 'Bike' advert that used the iconic Largo from the Bohemian composer's New World Symphony where I was mistakenly led to believe that he was also responsible for the perpetual Sunday afternoon-sounding music to 'Last of the Summer Wine' with Toots Thielemans on harmonica. Probably.

Listening to the 'Serenade in E Major lately, I find I have a newfound respect for this 'Hovis' composer. It is the unassuming brilliance of composers like Dvorak and Grieg that can creep up on you and make you forget you're listening to complete masters of the musical form at times. And as I've waited more than patiently for some consistent warmer/light weather to arrive, I have felt confident that by playing this spring-sounding Serenade it will finally arrive, even if it has often felt as if we would be consigned to a Narnia-like perpetual winter.

Parts of the serenade also remind me of walking amidst a sea of sun and wind tossed barley crops a la Ridley Scott's 'Gladiator'. There is as much summer as spring in this delightful piece and possibly a touch of autumn which suits us well in Britain where we can experience all four seasons in the space of a single day, sometimes a single hour. Music like this, much like the contrarian weather itself, can express a myriad of tones and moods and remind us of the fleeting nature of life with all its beauty and frustrations.

It seems in the past week we've well had our quota of April showers already supplied in the final days of March which means by current trend we should see some May flowers next week.

And if wintry weather continues to prevent the onset of Spring for much longer, I'll close my eyes and listen stubbornly to Dvorak's serenade on repeat until it arrives.