Allan Pettersson - Barfotasånger (Peter Mattei; Bengt-Åke Lundin)

Information

Composer: Allan Pettersson

• Sex sånger
• Barfotasånger

Peter Mattei, baritone

Bengt-Åke Lundin, piano

Date: 2022

Label: BIS

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Review

This is the fourth complete recording of Pettersson’s 24 Barefoot Songs for voice and piano (1943 c1949), the first to use a baritone voice throughout. The first recording, on a Swedish Society Discofil LP in the 1970s, later reissued on CD, split the songs between Erik Sædén’s aristocratic baritone and mezzo-soprano Margot Rödin. (Karl Sjunnesson also set down a selection – Caprice, 6/75). The first singer to record all 24 was another mezzo, the incomparable Monica Groop. Her CPO disc with accompanist Cord Garben (10/98, now sadly unavailable) was acclaimed by my much-missed colleague Robert Layton, who doubted ‘whether they could enjoy better advocacy’.

Layton was no admirer of Pettersson’s music, finding the songs melodically ‘unmemorable’, a somewhat harsh judgement – listen, for instance, to the seventh song, ‘Blomma, säj’ (‘Flower, tell me’) – and something about which I long but cordially disagreed with him! Had he heard this new set from Peter Mattei, immaculately accompanied by Bengt-Åke Lundin, I wonder whether he might have moderated his opinion. I suspect the songs’ simple, strophic nature would still not have appealed but he would have been lavish in his praise of Mattei and Lundin’s performance, fully comparable with that of Groop and Garben, and far more securely sung than by Torsten Mossberg (Sterling). Mattei brings power and depth to his performances – as in the 10th, ‘Jungfrun och ljugarpust’ (‘The Maiden and the Lying Wind’), the longest of the set, or the quirky 16th, ‘Kivlynnte liten’ (‘Little Grumpy’) – that belie charges of the simplistic.

Mattei and Lundin also include the earlier Six Songs (1935). Again, these are straightforward settings, although more complex than the Barefoot Songs. Unlike the later set, for which the composer wrote his own texts (based on his experiences of poverty in his youth), the Six Songs set verses of various poets and were not intended as a cycle. They make an effective sequence anyway, and once more Mattei and Lundin have the edge on the competition. BIS’s sound is perfect.

— Guy Rickards

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Allan Pettersson (19 September 1911 – 20 June 1980) was a Swedish composer and violist. He is considered one of the 20th century's most important Swedish composers. He studied at the Swedish Royal Academy of Music, and later in Paris with René Leibowitz, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud. Pettersson was best known as the creator of Barfotasånger, a collection of 24 songs for voice and piano set to his own lyrics. He also wrote 16 symphonies, choral and chamber music, and a number of orchestral pieces. His symphonies are often compared to Mahler's symphonic output.

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Peter Mattei (born 3 June 1965) is a Swedish baritone. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music and the University College of Opera in Stockholm, and made his debut in 1990 at the Drottningholm Court Theatre. Mattei's international breakthrough came with the title role in Peter Brook's staging of Don Giovanni at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1998. Since then he has had the privilege to work with many of the worlds' foremost conductors and directors on stages across Europe and in the U.S. Mattei, who can also play the piano, the accordion and the double bass, lives with his family in Bromma, Sweden.

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Bengt-Åke Lundin (born 25 November 1963) is a Swedish classical pianist and harpsichordist. He made his debut in 1989 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and since then has been a soloist with the major symphony orchestras in his native Sweden, the USA, Germany, England, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Estonia, Latvia, Egypt and China. Lundin is also a dedicated chamber musician and has a particular interest in lieder accompaniment. He has made a large number of recordings for the Swedish Radio, as well as for Naxos, BIS, Caprice and Phono Suecia labels.

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