Henk Badings - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5 (David Porcelijn)

Information

Composer: Henk Badings

• (01) Symphony No. 4
• (05) Symphony No. 5

Bochum Symphony Orchestra
David Porcelijn, conductor

Date: 2015
Label: cpo

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Review

With the possible exceptions of Alphons Diepenbrock (1862-1921) and Louis Andriessen (b1939), 20th-century Dutch music remains a closed book for most music lovers. The output of the prolific, essentially self-taught Henk Badings (1907-87) carries the additional stigma of an uncertain war record. Accused of collaboration during the Nazi occupation when he was installed as head of The Hague’s rebranded Reichs-Musikkonservatorium, he was permitted to resume his career in 1947. His Seventh Symphony was commissioned by Robert Whitney and his Louisville orchestra in 1954 and, until new allegations surfaced and his reputation nosedived a second time, he achieved name recognition for his accessible electroacoustic experiments. No surprise then that it can be difficult to get a handle on such a creative personality. Only recently have his decently wrought, Hindemith-ish symphonies been heard again, courtesy of CPO’s ongoing series.

The present volume pairs the seemingly under-motivated Fourth (1943) with the tighter, more idiosyncratic Fifth, written in 1949 for the 60th anniversary of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The traditional formal aspect of these scores is plain – there are the classic four segments and Badings even prefaces his opening movements with slow introductions – but the presence of non-Western harmonic decoration and pockets of exotic scoring rescue the idiom from total anonymity. Ironically, the insistent march-like tread of the faster movements echoes such (implicitly or explicitly) anti-Nazi symphonies as Weill’s Second and Schulhoff’s Third.

The main material of the Fifth, springing from cryptic opening motifs as was Badings’s practice, is more distinctive, the main Allegro taking off as a sort of broken-backed tango. The slow movement strikes deeper than anything else and the terseness of the finale’s peroration comes as a surprise.

While orchestral sonorities can seem a little dry-throated in Bochum, any under-projected moments must be excused given the total unfamiliarity of these scores. I’m not sure what I was expecting of a composer born in Java when it was still a Dutch colony but be warned that the predominant colour is grey.

-- David Gutman, Gramophone

More reviews:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2016/May/Badings_sys_7776692.htm
https://www.amazon.com/Badings-Symphonies-4-Bochumer-Symphoniker/dp/B01754P42M

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Henk Badings (hĕngk bä'dĭngz) (17 January 1907 – 26 June 1987) was a Dutch composer. Badings worked as a mining engineer and palaeontologist before dedicated his life entirely to music. Though largely self-taught, he did receive some advice from Willem Pijper, the doyen of Dutch composers at the time. Badings' compositions include 15 numbered symphonies, at least 4 string quartets, several concertos, orchestral works, chamber works, piano works, and incidental music. He also held numerous teaching positions, including ones at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and the University of Utrecht.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henk_Badings

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David Porcelijn (born 7 January 1947 in Achtkarspelen) is a Dutch composer and conductor. Porcelijn studied flute, composition and conducting at the Royal Conservatoire of Music in The Hague. He has held positions as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, the RTB Symphony Orchestra in Belgrade, the Nederlands Dans Theater, and the South Jutland Symphony Orchestra in Denmark. Porcelijn's recordings include ones for ABC Classics, EMERGO, cpo, Future Classics and Cybelle Records.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Porcelijn

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