Music for string orchestra

[Scarpia]

What is your favorite music for string orchestra?

I have a special affinity for music for string orchestra.  Favorite examples would be Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Strauss' Metamorphosen, Sibelius Andante Festivo, Lutoslawski, Funeral Music.  Mainly I'm attracted to gritty, dissonant stuff.

[some guy]

So, Bartók's Divertimento for one, then.

And Lachenmann's Schwankungen am Rand for another. (You won't mind a little sheet metal added to the strings, will you?) Lachenmann also seems to have done a string orchestra version of his third string quartet. It's called "Double (Grido II)."

And you won't want to miss Xenakis' Syrmos.

Just for starters.

(By the way, the juxtaposition of Vaughan Williams and Sibelius with "gritty, dissonant stuff" made me grin.)

[Cato]

What is your favorite music for string orchestra?

I have a special affinity for music for string orchestra.  Favorite examples would be Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Strauss' Metamorphosen, Sibelius Andante Festivo, Lutoslawski, Funeral Music.  Mainly I'm attracted to gritty, dissonant stuff.

Dvorak - Serenade for Strings
Herrmann - Psycho
Hans Rott - Symphony for Strings in A
Schoenberg - Transfigured Night and the String Orchestra version of the Second String Quartet
Shostakovich - String Orchestra version of the Eighth String Quartet

[Guido]

Bartoks Divertimento is an absolutely fantastic piece - I just adore every bar - it's such a shame that it's a comparative rarity.

Irving Fine Serious Song.

Bliss Music for Strings.

Kilar Orawa.

[Maciek]

All right, I've been beat to the Kilar and Bartok recommendations, but here are a few others:

I much prefer Lutoslawski's Preludes and Fugue (for a rather small string orchestra: 7-3-2-1) to Funeral Music (which, unless I'm in the mood, I find a bit boring, frankly).

Then there's Stravinsky (Concerto en Ré/in D)

Krzysztof Meyer's very nice 5th Symphony is written for strings.

I also love Tansman's Variations on Frescobaldi (definitely not gritty!).

You apparently disagree, but I'm very fond of both the Divertimento and the Concerto for string orchestra by Bacewicz (the latter is Bacewicz at her neoclassical best).

[greg]

This is the disc for you:



Syrmos is a good one, as some guy said, though possibly my favorite might be Aroura.

[mahler10th]

..
Hans Rott - Symphony for Strings in A...

Hans Rott is slowly growing in importance here!   

[Scarpia]

You apparently disagree, but I'm very fond of both the Divertimento and the Concerto for string orchestra by Bacewicz (the latter is Bacewicz at her neoclassical best).

The concerto was ok, the other I didn't like but I think part of the problem was lackluster performance.

Thanks for the suggestions, though.

[Guido]

Adams Shaker Loops too. Wonderful.

Lots of pieces for string orchestra with string (or other) soloist too...

[Scarpia]

(By the way, the juxtaposition of Vaughan Williams and Sibelius with "gritty, dissonant stuff" made me grin.)

Both the V-W and Sibelius have a fair bit of functional dissonance.  A stark contrast to, say, the Dvorak divertimento for strings, which strikes me as an extremely uninteresting confection.

Another related favorites would be the Finzi Clarinet concerto, in which the accompaniment is a string orchestra playing the most exquisite music imaginable.

[Luke]

No mention of these two extraordinary and major works for string orchestra? - Tippett's Double Concerto and his Corelli Fantasia - two of his finest works, and both wonderful, exalted stuff, from first note to last.

[Brian]

Serenades for Strings: Tchaikovsky, Suk, Dvorak, Wiren, Nielsen
Other substantial things: Stamitz' Orchestral Quartets, Grieg's Holberg Suite, Strauss' Metamorphosen, Britten's Simple Symphony, Koszewski's Concerto grosso (thanks Maciek for posting this!)
Smaller bits: Barber's Adagio, Grieg's "Last Spring", the first minute of Sibelius 6 
Not quite for string orchestra: Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten

[Maciek]

The concerto was ok, the other I didn't like but I think part of the problem was lackluster performance.

Fair enough, I think I prefer the concerto too.

BTW, a word of warning about the Lutoslawski (Preludes and Fugue): it's one of the "toughest" pieces Lutoslawski ever wrote, definitely not a crowd-pleasing firework. I find it ravishing, but perhaps it's something very personal (as with Funeral Music which is generally considered one of his best works from that period, and which, for some reason, I simply can't connect with).

Koszewski's Concerto grosso (thanks Maciek for posting this!)

Completely forgot about that one! It is quite wonderful, isn't it? Though again, not gritty.

BTW, I remember that someone (or was it me? ) once posted a link to a performance of Kilar's Orawa somewhere on the forum.

[karlhenning]

Tchaikovsky, Serenade in C, Opus 48
Stravinsky, Apollo (a/k/a Apollon musagète)

[The new erato]

Allan Petterson's 3 concertoes for string orchestra. The third one, with the occasionally played Mesto, is particularly fine.

[Lethevich]

Favourites:

RVW - Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus (This piece is more dynamic than many performances allow it to be.)
Harold Truscott - Elegy (I find this to be flawed - it is rather long and spare, but I love that skeletal ghostly quality.)
Britten - Bridge Variations, Simple Symphony (Naturally )
Tüür - All of it, but especially Lighthouse and Action, Passion, Illusion (The first is very conventionally appealing, but has a vital spark due to its weird baroque tonality fused with the Baltic minimal style. The stand alone or triptych Action, Passion and Illusion pieces are more of an exercise in differing rhetorical styles, and really very good.)
Vasks - Symphony No.1, Violin Concerto, Musica Dolorosa (He composes in a style which is easy to mock, but I enjoy his heart on sleeve compositions - outrageously accessable in their fusion of minimalism and Romanticism.

I associate early Penderecki with this format as he composed quite widely in it, including the Serenade, Emanations, Canon, Polymorphia, Threnody, etc. Elizabeth Maconchy wrote several works in this format, has anybody heard them?

Edit: for "gritty" I will definitely second the Pettersson rec, those string concertos are neat stuff.

[UB]

Interesting that all these 20th century works come up...when I read the title I immediately thought of Mendelssohn's youthful String Symphonies which I often turn to when I want to escape the music of my life.

[Maciek]

I associate early Penderecki with this format as he composed quite widely in it, including the Serenade

The Serenade is actually quite recent (mid-90s) - there's a DUX disc of Penderecki works for chamber orchestra, which contains a good helping of works for strings alone: http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Dux/DUX0678. You're right to mention Threnody, Polymorphia, Canon. How could I ever forget?! Those three are among my favorite Penderecki pieces.

Also worth mentioning (though I'm not particularly fond of this one) is Gorecki's 3 Pieces in the Olden Style.

BTW, I remember that someone (or was it me? ) once posted a link to a performance of Kilar's Orawa somewhere on the forum.

It was me!

There are also a couple of versions available on YouTube, including a recording by Marek Mos's AUKSO Orchestra and one by the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra under Agnieszka Duczmal (tempos nicely contrasting btw those two).

[some guy]

Maciek, thank you so much for bringing up the Lutosławski Preludes & Fugue. That is a very charming and delightful work. I don't know how I missed this one back when I was buying everything of his I could. I loved how he solved the problem of a string piece sounding all samey--he uses all the string techniques at once, and keeps using them throughout. That way, no one technique (bowing, say) gets established in our ears as the norm so that another technique (pizzacato, say) seems an obvious contrast, put in there to avoid tedium. Everything, in short, seems utterly natural and right. (Which is to say, technically, that everything is utterly artificial and right!!)

Lutosławski was one of the greats, to be sure, and this piece is Lutosławski at the very top of his form, I'd say. Thanks again, Maciek. I've not been buying Lutosławski recently, under the delusion that I'd already got it all. Wow. Well, I'm very happy now to have this new piece in my ears.

(The fugue, by the way, for those of you who don't know this piece yet, is outrageously splendid. I won't say any more about it! You'll see. That is, hear.)

[Maciek]

You're very welcome and that's great news for me - maybe I'm not deluding myself. Because that's among my 3-4 absolutely favorite Lutoslawski works but for some reason it gets performed/recorded much less often than many of his other things.