Allan Pettersson - Symphony No. 12 'The Dead in the Square' (Christian Lindberg)

Information

Composer: Allan Pettersson

• Symphony No. 12, 'The Dead in the Square'

Swedish Radio Choir

Eric Ericson Chamber Choir

Norrköping Symphony Orchestra

Christian Lindberg, conductor

Date: 2021

Label: BIS

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Review

Each instalment of Christian Lindberg’s Pettersson survey has been much anticipated and the release of Pettersson’s sole choral symphony (and, indeed, one of his few commissioned works) is no exception. The commission, for a choral work ‘contemporary in a profound sense’, came in 1973 from the musical director of Uppsala University, Carl Rune Larsson, to celebrate the university’s 500th anniversary four years later. Pettersson set to work with a will, choosing nine poems by Pablo Neruda (in Swedish translation) and completed the 55-minute score for large choir and large orchestra in January the following year – three years ahead of schedule.

Superficially, the Twelfth has many points in common with other Pettersson symphonies: music of extreme intensity cast into a single, enormous movement – albeit in nine closely related sections, one per poem – that barely relents at all. Differences are quite apparent, too: the urgent, fast-moving opening for violins (Pettersson’s symphonies often build from initially subdued openings, stealing up from behind to overwhelm one’s senses) and the triumphant, roof-raising close (instead of fading quietly, all energy spent). And then there is the choir, who dominate proceedings for much of the work, driven on by Neruda’s searingly powerful poems, based on the killing of Chilean protesters in 1946.

The Swedish Radio and Eric Ericson Chamber Choirs are no strangers to Pettersson’s idiom, having figured in earlier recordings. Lindberg’s is now the third Twelfth to appear, the best-recorded of them and, I think, the best-sung, magnificently supported by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. Larsson’s recording made with the premiere performers holds up remarkably well but cannot match the urgency Manfred Honeck injected into his recording for CPO. Where Lindberg’s performance scores over both is in finding more light and shade in the score than Honeck managed, aided by BIS’s spectacular sound. A fabulous account of a remarkable work.

— 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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