Sinfonia No. 3 is a new DSD Single from Gianandrea Noseda conducting the National Symphony Orchestra. This is a DSD Exclusive, Not Available on SACD release at NativeDSD.Com. This DSD Single is part of the complete George Walker: Five Sinfonias series,

George Walker’s third sinfonia was premiered a decade after the second, and once more by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (conducted, in this case, by Andrey Boreyko). But it was composed a full 22 years after its predecessor. The fact that it had to wait a much shorter time for its first performance certainly speaks to Walker’s growing recognition as an American master.

The present work finds the octogenarian composer at the height of his creative powers, as vigorous and full of energy as ever. In three compact movements following the traditional fast-slow-fast outline, it is a technically challenging and emotionally charged composition, in turns majestic and tender, agitated and more relaxed.

An energetic opening sets the stage for an austere first movement, dominated by massive blocks of chords. The middle movement starts out with some lyrical woodwind lines, yet its elementary melodic gestures build up to a dramatic high point, followed by a resolution of tensions.

The final movement is tumultuous and intense throughout. Unlike many of his younger colleagues, Walker remained a committed modernist in his harmonic language. As the British critic Tom Service has written: [Walker’s music] “has a sharp-edged clarity in its modernist dissonances and angularity, and yet you feel his essential desire to communicate with his audiences throughout.”

National Symphony Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda, Conductor