Allan Pettersson - Symphonies Nos. 7 & 16 (Antal Doráti; Yuri Ahronovitch)

Information

Composer: Allan Pettersson

1. Symphony No. 7
2. Symphony No. 16

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra

Antal Doráti & Yuri Ahronovitch, conductors

Date: 1969; 1984

Label: Swedish Society

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Review

As the messages to this site’s Bulletin Board demonstrate Pettersson continues to provoke strong feelings. However one chooses to describe him, adjectivally speaking – and we all know the kind of things that are said of him – listening to a Pettersson Symphony at his greatest is one of the most charged, moving and shaking experiences in late twentieth century music. And of all the works of his that I know it is the Seventh – in this by now classic performance – that shakes me the most.

Over the course of its forty-minute span we follow a symphonic argument of development and rare drama and one that reveals itself to be profoundly human in its breadth. Listening to it again for review purposes and writing down scraps of notes one can see perhaps more clearly that however anguished the language the structure is firm. From the static opening with those sepulchral brass to the sense of redirection of energy that is soon generated we are in the grip of a symphonist of stature. The insistence of the horn layers from 6’00 and the obsessively frantic drum tattoos and searing violins open out into a kind of March-Chorale before the inevitable symphonic catastrophe hits. The lyrical outburst in response to this assault (just hear how the violins try to play through the cataclysm) leads to the strings playing higher and higher as if the very fiddles themselves are striving for oxygen. It is the consolation of the winds that ushers in the beautiful, aching string cantilena from 25’00 or thereabouts, moments of the most extraordinary hope and refuge, real and human and of terrible beauty. Inevitably the line cannot withstand the renewed attacks but this time, in time, the fragments of orchestral sound and colour – flute solos, striding bass pizzicati, wandering strings – lead to a long-breathed sense of almost-resolution. Once again the strings soar high up, the lower strings repeat themselves and a brass figure ends it all. In print it seems schematic; in practice it is astonishing, a threnody of compelling beauty and harrowing fissures.

Its companion, the Sixteenth, was his last completed Symphony and commissioned by the saxophonist here, Frederick L Hemke. Opening with a jagged and short series of motifs and stern drum tattoos the rather - and appropriately – sour-sounding saxophone’s independence of line seems an act of heroism given the mayhem of motion that buffets and surrounds it. Around 7.00 the orchestral tumult subsides and we can hear the high winds, which shepherd the solo instrumentalist through the next stages until a magical withdrawal of tone at 9.20 – beautiful and ruminative. From 11.50 there is a dramatic accelerando for the saxophone, with a hint of menace, followed by an uneasy-sounding cantilena. In its concision and abrupt disjunctions this is a work that fights and refuses to yield or to go gentle into that good night.

The notes reprint those for the relevant LP issues of these two symphonies. If you try anything of Pettersson’s let it be this Seventh.

— Jonathan Woolf

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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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Antal Doráti (9 April 1906 – 13 November 1988) was a Hungarian-born American conductor. He was a student of Bartók, Kodály and Leó Weiner at the Liszt Academy. Doráti made his American debut in 1937 and was music director of the American Ballet Theater from 1941 to 1945. He went on to conduct the Dallas Symphony (1945–49), Minneapolis Symphony (1949–60), BBC Symphony (1963–66), Stockholm Philharmonic (1966–70), Washington National Symphony (1970–77), Royal Philharmonic (1975–78), and Detroit Symphony (1977–81). Over the course of his career he made over 600 recordings.

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Yuri Ahronovitch (13 May 1932 – 31 October 2002) was a Soviet-born Israeli conductor. Born in Leningrad, he studied with Nathan Rachlin and Kurt Sanderling at the Leningrad Conservatory. In 1964 he was appointed Chief Conductor of the USSR Ministry of Culture Symphony Orchestra and worked there until emigrating to Israel in 1972. His recordings for Melodiya, notably Shostakovich's First Symphony, were well received in the West. From 1975 to 1986 he was Chief Conductor of the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra and from 1982 to 1987 Chief Conductor of the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

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