Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree is a set of variations, with fugue, for orchestra composed in 1939 by Jaromír Weinberger. It premiered under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli in New York City on October 12, 1939. The work is based on an English popular song of the period, which Weinberger is said to have mistaken for a folk song, and opens with the theme presented without preliminaries. Seven variations follow:
The fugue, which ends the work, has an eight-bar subject which finally joins contrapuntally with the original theme of the piece.
There are contemporary recordings of the work by The Cleveland Symphony Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski on Columbia and by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Constant Lambert.
