JAN VAN GILSE (1881-1944): Symphony No. 3 "Elevation".

Description: When we said "Very attractive and colorfully orchestrated, these works whet the appetite for the composer's remaining two symphonies" after hearing the first two symphonies (07K001), we didn't think it would be almost exactly four years until the opportunity came. Here is a 63-minute, five-movement monument to Germanic Late Romanticism which van Gilse finished in 1907. A soprano sings a paean to Love in the slow third movement (whose author the notes do not care to identify for us) and three segments from the "Song of Songs" in the finale (don't worry, orchestral music purists, the evil human voice is active for only around 15 of the work's 63 minutes). We noted four years ago van Gilse's obvious infatuation with Mahler.  Well, that's still here, especially in the first three movements (full of the tempestuous passions one might hear in, say, Mahler's Third) while the 22-minute final movement and its ecstatic soprano part move closer to Richard Strauss territory. Wish we could tell you more about the symphony's subtitle but the notes don't tell us anything about that or any of the actual music either... German-English texts. Aile Asszonyi (soprano), Netherlands Symphony Orchestra; David Porcelijn.