Julius Eastman: Symphony No. II - The Faithful Friend: The Lover Friend's Love for the Beloved

Julius Eastman completed his one-movement orchestral work Symphony No. II—The Faithful Friend: The Lover Friend’s Love for the Beloved in 1983. The American composer creates huge, otherworldly soundscapes from full orchestra bolstered by unusually large bass forces including three bassoons, three bass clarinets, three tubas, three contrabass clarinets, and six timpani.

Reconstructed from a hand-written score, the Symphony explores the pain of lost love, in particular between Eastman and his partner. “It’s a break-up letter,” conductor Dalia Staveska tells Apple Music Classical; “Eastman was not in a very good place when he wrote this—he was homeless and he had a lot of problems at the end of his life and probably wrote this piece while crashing on somebody’s couch somewhere with a piano.

“In my opinion, its unusual instrumentation is designed to create low and resonating drone sounds throughout the piece. It has a very special timbre to it—it’s very, very dark and really beautiful.”

The process of reviving Eastman’s music has been compounded by the composer’s idiosyncratic notation methods, making it difficult to interpret accurately his musical intentions. So this performance is a major contribution to the Eastman cause. “This is music that has been forgotten and neglected for years,” says Stasevska, “and I hope that everybody will get a little bit inspired to discover more of who Julius Eastman was, his music, and his life.”