Gerard Schwarz - Symphony No. 2 / Concerto for Orchestra [CD]

Completed during World War II, Honegger's Symphony No. 2 gives voice to the composer's horror of mankind's barbarity and inhumanity perpetrated during the conflict. It's power derives from the seamlessness of it's construction and the intensity of it's expression. The work's dark, brooding mood comes to a profoundly moving climax in the finale's elegiac chorale tune, played on first violins accompanied by trumpet, thus ending the symphony on a more optimistic note than might be expected. Henri Lazarof's Concerto for Orchestra No. 2, 'Icarus' is a volatile, richly coloured score, and Poema, composed as a wedding gift for Gerard Schwarz and his wife, is both romantic and brilliant.