One of my favorite musical rituals involves the Winter Solstice, the first day of the winter season and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. At the heart of this ritual is listening to Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, which bears the nickname “Winter Dreams.” I discovered the piece in college when I was studying overseas in Vienna, Austria. In the midst of a night-time snowstorm I took my Walkman and left my dorm with Tchaikovsky’s First – in a performance featuring Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic on DG – and made my way around town, which at that point was completely new to me. The mix of hearing the symphony for the first time and getting lost in the city gave me a thrilling sense of adventure that I continue to associate with this piece.
Over the years I’ve had many “Winter Solstice” parties, some entirely by myself, some with many friends, most with copious amounts of chilled vodka. Probably the biggest of these parties occurred at the downtown loft of my pal and Ecstatic Living Room partner, Glenn Petry. I bet there were 75 people there, and after a few hours of drinking and eating I remember giving a brief spoken introduction to the piece and then letting it rip over Glenn’s stereo as everyone listened intently and went along with the ride. When the piece roared to its conclusion the crowd gave a huge ovation as if we were listening to a live orchestra. Glenn’s apartment had been transformed into an Ecstatic Living Room.
The first movement bears the heading “Dreams of the Winter Journey,” and it’s flickering strings and mysterious air conveys the feeling of a night-time sleighride through a vast, snow-covered expanse. The second movement, “Land of Gloom, Land of Mists,” is an achingly beautiful and sweepingly romantic slow movement. Its centerpiece is a gorgeous horn solo, which eventually leads the massed strings to a huge climax. After a strange, ghostly scherzo, Tchaikovsky regroups for a what becomes a rousing and celebratory finale, which you can sample here:
Once winter has fully arrived, one of the other great symphonies that I can hardly wait to blast on my stereo is Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica, the British composer’s Seventh Symphony. I’m listening to it tonight, an icy night (6 degrees Fahrenheit and dropping) in upstate New York.
Quite remarkably, Vaughan Williams was in his 80s when he tackled this truly awe-inspiring work. His experience writing the score to the film Scott of the Antarctic (1947) was so compelling that the composer decided to explore the subject further in a symphonic treatment of the story. Vaughan Williams captures not only the forbidding, unfathomable beauty of the frozen landscape but also the heroism of the intrepid yet tragically doomed explorer Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912), who perished with members of his team just short of the South Pole (the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to reach this “Last Place on Earth” just days earlier). Vaughan Williams provides short snippets from various literary sources at the headings of each movement to underline the spiritual meaning behind Scott’s quest, none more telling than Scott’s last journal entry at the head of the final movement: “I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us; therefore we have no cause for complaint.”
Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica is what I affectionately call an “IMAX in sound,” brilliantly scored to evoke the majesty, desolation and mystery of the Ice Continent. A wind machine helps whip up blizzard conditions, and a combination of harps, vibraphone, deep bells, and celesta (a piano-like instrument whose hammers hit metal plates instead of strings) – with a wordless women’s chorus and solo soprano – casts a decidedly otherworldly spell (something that likely influenced Danny Elfman in his various film scores, especially for the Tim Burton films, and Bernard Hermann in his music for Hitchcock films, especially the famous Dali-designed dream sequence in Spellbound).
The shattering climax of the piece is a truly thunderous entry by the organ in the third movement “Landscape,” which conjures up vast slabs of ice shearing from the cliffs and plunging into the frigid seas (you’ll hear it at around the three minute mark in this YouTube video clip). There’s nothing that I know in all of music that conveys the menacing power of winter more than this.
And in case you’re interested, here are a few recommended recordings of these pieces:
The dynamic young Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski delivers a potent Tchaikovsky First in a new recording with the London Philharmonic.
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There are several great recordings of VW's "Antarctica" including this powerful one led by Dutch conductor Bernard Haitink.
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I also enjoy this Naxos recording by Kees Bakels and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. And for $8.99, it's the most afordable way to get to Antartica.
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