Symphony No.11

Emil Tabakov created his Symphony No. 11 in 2020 - the first COVID year worldwide when all public events were cancelled. Concert halls were closed and the conductor Tabakov found himself free, prompting composer Tabakov to begin work on his next work. "After the tenth symphony I had decided that I could hardly write any more symphonies. Writing a symphony is an extremely energy-draining activity. Sometimes it takes a whole day to write a page of music, sometimes it can take 3-4 pages. But in 2020, when they suspended all concerts because of the pandemic, of course I started writing. I hadn't decided it was going to be a symphony, but then it was as if the very material that sounded in my head was such that it suggested a more serious development, and that's how the decision for another symphony came about," the composer says. The history of his symphonies shows us that it is very rare (only the Symphony No.6 was written within one year - 2001) that he did not take at least three years to compose such an opus, due to his busy schedule as a conductor. In this case the symphony was completed in a few months. "I have composed the Eleventh Symphony from March to August 2020, and it is in four movements, and like many of my symphonies there are two slow movements - the first movement is slow. I don't premeditate, like this one will be a slow movement and this one will be a fast movement. The very basis, the thematic material itself, imposes these decisions on me. It might be two slow movements one after the other, as in my eighth symphony, for example." There is also more than one slow movement in the structure of his Symphonies No. 4 and No. 9, as well as in his Viola Concerto. It is also the composer's need to lengthen, to strain the musical time, which naturally requires the mastery to develop the material in such a way as to avoid the threat of monotony, of fatigue on the mind of the performer and the listener. It is another work of Tabakov's that involves a large orchestra, with divisions in the strings (this is a division of the group into separate voices, which helps to form a more transparant sound.), the full effect of which requires the presence of a full staff in the ensemble. The composer uses the large orchestra with extraordinary sonic imagination. Here, in the Eleventh Symphony, he adds instruments less frequently used by him, with a specific timbre and acoustic characteristic. "It's the first time I've used a harp in a symphony," he said, " I did it in a very early ballet of mine ('Helen of Priestis') and in the violin concerto, where there's a celesta - there and in my Symphony No. 10." The score's graphics suggest that the orchestra faces instrumental and ensemble challenges. "This symphony is not very difficult for an orchestra," says Tabakov, " in general, my later symphonies, it may be instinctive, but I've thought about it not being difficult. Unlike my first symphonies. I've noticed the same with Mahler. In the beginning his symphonies are very difficult for the orchestra and for the conductor, but obviously when he himself started conducting much more actively, his later symphonies, they may be much deeper in meaning, much more voluminous, but conducting-wise they are somehow clearer, for the orchestra too. For example, my third symphony is terribly difficult - both for the orchestra and for the conductor. Whereas later on, the reflex of how it can work out as a realization sort of develops." The work continues the line of Tabakov's symphonism, with patterns fixed by him. But they also allow for an opening up to specific features of meaning and texture. It has been stressed elsewhere that each of his scores evokes admiration for his compositional technique, for his ability to create a "space of infinity" out of very economical material, for the timbral imagination that conquers imperceptibly, laid in the simplicity of expression, in the directness of meaning. Very often the individual timbre stands out and magnetically attracts the listener, removed from the large orchestra, changing, complementing the semantics of the work. Here, for example, the beginning of the symphony in the first slow movement is entrusted to a solo violin with a sourdine (piano dolce) that hints at the theme-construct of the development. Its ascending movement within two octaves with repeated writing is followed by a descending response in the solo cello, again with a sourdine, then picked up by the solo viola with sourdine - in the same dynamics and character of playing. The development is accomplished with the addition of instruments from the orchestra. In the variant voicings, combinations of timbres are interwoven - the orchestra grows not merely in volume. Its expansion thickens the colour in the sound picture, and the joining of the various groups in the ensemble, thickens the sonority, the dynamics grow and culminate in the forte-fortissimo. The phases in the development suggest the presence of a sonatina - a different, derived motif follows, in a new rhythmic formula, which can be taken as a second theme, different from the first in its ostinato repetition, but in its extension closer in intervallic form to the main theme. Here the principle of its introduction is repeated, again with a single sound-tempo (violin), then cello, joined in descending and ascending passages by the other instruments. The timbres of the harp and celesta stand out in this specifically differentiated polyphony, transparent in its structure, which transforms the sonority and expands the space. The music becomes increasingly expressive, the development relying primarily on descending passages and counterpointing movement of longer note durations. This rather graphic description of the score cannot really convey the impressive increase in emotional energy, the dramatic character of the music. The coda before the end of the movement, brings together the two thematic nuclei - against a background of recumbent harmony in the riser, with the addition of harp and celesta, oboe, flute, then piccolo, celesta and timpani complete this movement in pianissimo. A similar development, with a different timbre and variation of thematic choices, is characteristic of the third slow movement of the composition. There are of course different ideas in this movement in terms of the mechanisms of musical movement, but these somehow continue to reflect what was set as a foundation in the first movement. The two fast movements - the second and fourth - are speed instrumental play with a toccata- ostinato character. In the second movement, the basis of this playing is a stretto thematic construction in which pauses play an essential role and, unlike the first movement, here the whole story begins with an oboe solo, replicated by the orchestra in contrasting dynamics, passes through the woodwinds and saturates the space with swirling orchestral passages, with pauses in their construction that give them a particular asymmetry, a breathlessness. This composer's decision strains the orchestral fabric even more, and the principle of modified repetition characteristic of Tabakov's symphonic writing is also pervaded here by small but significant details, and impulses of development. Again ostinato, but a different kind of movement characterises the thematicism of the fast, fourth movement. In any case, it must be stressed again that the thematic material of the work grows out of the initial theme-construct and grows horizontally and vertically out of Emil Tabakov's always impressive orchestral (in terms of mass and volume) and timbral (in terms of individual instrumental behaviour) imagination and absolute command of the principles of building a symphonic dramaturgy. His music combines narrative with imagery in a particular way - the narrative provokes the listener's imagination. In this symphony, each movement ends with a diminuendo, a disappearance of sound into silence. At the very end of the composition, the fourth movement, the sound fades, as if dying after an aggressive outburst of timpani and tam-tam. Only the harp and celesta remain, and in the final five bars the harp lonely seems to count down time through a pause-interrupted repetition of the fourth octave's "F" tone, creating the sense of some kind of passing, of an otherworldliness. Emil Tabakov does not like to talk about musical images, about those elements of dramaturgy that would illuminate the content of a particular work. The character of the Symphony No. 11 continues what we can read in his previous works. At the same time it emphasizes something different - insofar as it can be "heard" from the score pages it could be defined as a wise striving for humility, for the reconciliation of the personality with itself, through closure, through self-absorption. The energy of the expression is directed inward, back to the one who created it. It is a different account of the upliftment of the personality, as a result of or in spite of the contradictory experience with the environment in which it resides.