Allan Pettersson - Symphonies Nos. 4 & 16 (Christian Lindberg)

Information

Composer: Allan Pettersson

• Symphony No. 4
• Symphony No. 16

Jörgen Pettersson, saxophone

Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

Christian Lindberg, conductor

Date: 2024

Label: BIS

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Review

The Lindberg-Pettersson project continues to go from strength to strength. After his revelatory recording of the Ninth Symphony (5/14), Lindberg now attends to No 4 (1958 59) – which initiated the compositional phase culminating in the Ninth – and No 16 (1979), probably his last fully completed work. They make a finely contrasted pair, neither perhaps holding to the stereotypical Petterssonian model.

The same strengths that informed earlier instalments in Lindberg’s part of the cycle shine through once more here: a sure grasp of structure; attention to detail; and an unwavering, almost missionary zeal to communicate, burning scarcely less bright than did the composer’s own. In No 4, the competition is fierce: Alun Francis’s interpretation was one of the best of those he committed to CPO’s incomplete compendium and remains a fine account, but Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra bring out the light and shade of one of Pettersson’s more stylistically fractured scores, featuring radiant chorales, still more. The orchestration is also a revelation, right from the opening organ-like sonorities which (as this may be a memorial to the composer’s deeply religious mother) take on an extra resonance.

The Sixteenth, part symphony, part saxophone concerto, is no mere filler but a major coupling in its own right. Soloist Jörgen Pettersson has made a point of performing the work precisely as written, without the modifications made by John-Edward Kelly on his otherwise fine CPO account. The result is the most fluent account of this final flowering of Pettersson’s symphonic mastery. BIS’s sound is rich and natural, outpointing the CPO rival and that by the work’s dedicatee, Frederick Hemke, after the premiere (on Swedish Society, long nla). The fascinating bonus DVD is in Swedish with English subtitles.

— 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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Christian Lindberg (born 15 February 1958) is a Swedish trombonist, conductor and composer. In the course of an exceptional career, Lindberg has single-handedly established the trombone as a solo instrument and was the first Swedish instrumentalist to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO). Today he devotes most of his time to composing, with commissions from ensembles such as the CSO and the Rotterdam Philharmonic. Lindberg also has a flourishing conducting career. His acclaimed and wide-ranging discography on BIS includes more than 50 CDs.

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