The music of Josef Suk is now a genuine rarity in the orchestral repertoire. Sir Charles Mackerras and the Czech Philharmonic showcased Suk's most ambitious work, the Asrael Symphony, in the first of their Edinburgh international festival concerts, but while this may have been a festival event in name, there was nothing particularly festive about a half-full Usher Hall. Maybe it is because Edinburgh is steadily emptying itself of tourists, thanks to the unsynchronised starting times of the fringe and international festivals. Even so, it is strange that the lure of Mackerras, who has been a firm favourite in festival director Brian McMaster's era, did not entice a larger audience for the adventure of the Asrael Symphony.
Composed between 1904 and 1906, and widely considered to be Suk's masterpiece, the Asrael Symphony is dedicated to Dvorak, Suk's father-in-law, and Otylka, Suk's wife. After Dvorak's death in 1904, Suk planned a five-movement symphony and completed the work's first three movements. Tragically, Otylka died just a year later, so Suk transformed his ideas for a fast-paced finale, and composed two slow, adagio movements in her memory. The resulting symphony is, unsurprisingly, a largely gloomy meditation on death and grief.
The work is Mahlerian in its scope and length, as well as its emphasis on musical narrative over conventional structures. The second movement is a warped recollection of happier times, a grotesquely slowed-down and fragmented folk dance. And for all the surface beauty of the orchestration of the scherzo third movement, there is a bitter, acerbic quality to Suk's melodic invention. The glorious tune in the central section of this movement is the only passage in the whole work where Suk allows himself to indulge in the tenderness of his love for Otylka. Mackerras and the Czech Philharmonic responded with playing of open-hearted warmth.
The surrounding movements are the emotional heart of the symphony, and chart the progress of an ominous motto theme from C minor, trombone-laden darkness, to a transfigured, C major light. Mackerras and his Czech players handled this journey with immaculate dramatic timing. But somehow a sense of the emotional precipice on which Suk's Asrael Symphony is built was never fully revealed.
