The creative volition that brought about this symphony had a twofold origin.
Reconstruction grows from devastation, resurrection from death.
Moreover the artistic loss caused thereby was somehow epitomised for the composer when he stood before Gottfried Semper's opera house in Dresden, empty and boarded up, its life suspended. He could not foresee that, when this theatre was re-opened in February 1984, on the fortieth anniversary of the bombing, his own Sinfonia Intrepida would be broadcast by the BBC, in a Netherlands Radio recording, to mark the occasion. Against such a desolate and total obliteration of the good, human creativity and the assertion of the human spirit stand immovable, indestructible. This symphony is a strongly positive statement, a celebration of the Phoenix arising from the fire. The musical means whereby Whettam treats a theme of such universal and heroic importance are correspondingly on a large scale.