The orchestra sang as a unit; the phrasing was exquisitely sculptured; the symphonic values were blended, contrasted, interwoven.
"I wanted the five movements to have a satisfying symphonic unity, with its contrasts of slow and fast movements and the symphonic development of the material," Blackford told me.
The slow lyricism of the quartet contrasted totally with the maverick symphonic interplay and paradoxical brightness of the opera.
The film, with a screenplay by Philip Dunne, follows a symphonic structure, developing a set of themes across contrasting tonalities.
It also follows a convincing symphonic shape, with a dialectical first movement that contrasts different blocks of musical material, a sometimes anguished slow movement, fierce climactic scherzo, and a finale that gradually discharges the tension and finds quiet resolution.
That matter-of-factness tended to iron out the contrasts between the movements of this most symphonic of song cycles, though there was still plenty of fine orchestral detail in all of them, even if the Lighthouse's rather unforgiving acoustics made some of the textures harsher than they might have been elsewhere.
Secondly, Liszt and his followers weakened the sonata form by using in their symphonic poems musical organizations based on program rather than on contrast of keys.
There are many more: the whole piece is staged as contrast between an outer world of large-scale symphonic structure and an inner, private realm of dream, doubt, and sometimes nightmare.
In contrast to the restraint of the Stravinsky was the symphonic weightiness and unabashed emotionalism of Shostakovich's Prelude and Scherzo for double string quartet (1925).
Manze likes big, muscular, symphonic conceptions in which the tempos don't race and there is plenty of contrast between the loud proclamations and delicate responses.
In sharp contrast to Mozart's keen balance of form and emotional expression, Anton Bruckner's symphonic output fully embraced the cause of Romanticism.
