Although Suk's "Asrael" Symphony is perhaps the more deeply felt and emotionally affective work, in many ways Ripening is more masterful and more profound. And it is certainly the more subtly composed. The "Asrael" is a five-movement symphony not unlike the symphonies of Mahler in tone and structure. Ripening is wholly individual in tone and utterly original in structure. Called a symphonic poem by its composer, Suk's Ripening is based on a poem of the same title by Czech writer Antonin Sova. Suk began work on it in 1912, completed it five years later, and heard it premiered the year after that by Vaclav Talich and the newly formed Czech Philharmonic. The work's long gestation was caused in part by Suk's concert career as the second violinist of the Bohemian String Quartet and in part by the tremendous material difficulties caused by World War I, but in large part by the sheer difficulty of executing a work of such tremendous emotional range and unprecedented structural sophistication. Ripening could be described as being in seven large, continuous sections: Introduction, first Scherzo, Adagio, second Scherzo, "Funeral March," Fugue, and Epilogue. Each of these sections, however, partakes of motives and themes of the other sections. Thus, the slow Introduction contains the melodic seeds of Adagio and the Epilogue, the first Scherzo recalls the opening bars of the Introduction, the Adagio predicts the thematic material of the second Scherzo, the "Funeral March" recalls some of the gestures of the Adagio, the Fugue's themes are made up of motives derived from earlier themes, and the concluding Epilogue dissolves all of the themes and motives into sublime harmonies. All of this sounds tremendously complicated, but the emotional progress of Ripening makes its musical progress absolutely lucid. The title itself is metaphoric and might be better translated as "maturity." In the work, Suk traces a life—his life as it turns out—through the music. The radiant Introduction is his childhood, luminous and clear. The light-footed first Scherzo is his rambunctious youth. The ardent Adagio, marked "very expressive and passionate," is his love for his wife. The muscular second Scherzo is his early manhood. The anguished "Funeral March" is the death of his beloved wife. The Fugue is the resolution of his suffering through work. And the Epilogue is, of course, Suk's own hard-won ripening.

© All Music Guide