Music for listeners with a musically sweet tooth, lustily and enthusiastically performed - Jef Maes's emotionally candid Second Symphony suggests passionate happenings on the big screen.

There is always a temptation to label lushly scored neo-romantic symphonies as 'potential film music', and yet a minute or two spent in the company of Jef Maes's emotionally candid Second Symphony inevitably suggests — at least to this listener — passionate happenings on the big screen. Maes (b.1905) was a student of the Antwerp composer and conductor Karel Candael, and calls himself a "modern romantic". The symphony's orchestration and melodic complexion seem to acknowledge both Strauss and Korngold, the lyrical first movement especially (try 203" into track I); while the alternation of sultry romance (very much a 1920-30s vintage) and energetic action music could have hailed from the pen of many a 'second league' symphonist. Maes's harmonic writing is occasionally reminiscent of Gershwin, although the second movement's foggy impressionism (dark brass and woodwinds, rhapsodizing strings) strikes far nearer our own shores (Bax, maybe), with some positively Delian writing at 414". The finale is distinguished by colourful brass writing a la Hindemith and the symphony ends in a mood of martial exuberance.

Maes's Second Symphony was dedicated "to his childhood friend and fellow student Andre Cluytens" and first performed in 1966 under Eduard Flipse (who was best known here for his notable live Mahler recordings on Philips). As an orchestral, chamber and solo violist, Macs was well equipped to compose a viola concerto and indeed his lively contribution to the genre (dating from 1956) deserves an occasional airing. Again, reverie alternates with busyness, although here Macs seems to take himself rather less seriously and the concerto is notably good-humoured. Best, perhaps, is the songful Lento that succeeds the cadenza (track 5).

The other works in the programme are both lighter in tone: a busy Ouverture concertante (which, as the annotator rightly points out, "does not contain a single concertante element") and an Arabesque and Scherzo for flute and orchestra that is more demanding on the soloist than the listener. All performances are lusty and enthusiastic; the recordings are excellent, and the documentation informative. Recommended to all post-romantics who confess a musically sweet tooth.

-- Robert Cowan, Gramophone [11/1995]