Allan Pettersson - Violin Concerto No. 1; etc. (Ulf Wallin; etc.)

Information

Composer: Allan Pettersson

• Concerto for Violin and String Quartet
• Two Elegies
• Andante espressivo
• Romanza
• Lamento
• Four Improvisations

Ulf Wallin, violin

Sueye Park, violin

Daniel Vlashi Lukaçi, violin

German Tcakulov, viola

Alexander Wollheim, cello

Thomas Hoppe, piano

Date: 2023

Label: BIS

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Review

Allan Pettersson’s reputation rests still, mostly, on his sequence of large-scale, immensely powerful symphonies. His songs – particularly the 24 Barefoot Songs (1942 45) – and concertos have followed in their wake, extending the compositional picture of him a little further, but Pettersson the chamber composer, who played viola for many years in the then Stockholm Concert Society Orchestra (now the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic), remains a largely unknown quantity.

It is not as if his dozen or so surviving chamber works (apprentice pieces from the 1930s and ’40s, plus seven sonatas for two violins of 1950 51) have been neglected: each has had at least two prior recordings, some more than that. Twenty-seven years ago, I welcomed Ulf Hoelscher’s fine recording of the largest of them, the intense, experimental Concerto for violin and string quartet (1949), that doubles as his First for violin (distinguishing it from the larger work with orchestra penned for Ida Haendel). Hoelscher’s account of this controversial work, which caused a critical storm at its 1951 premiere, stands up very well, though Ulf Wallin and his four accompanists find even more of the music behind the notes. Pettersson referred to the concerto being ‘charged to breaking point with dissonance’, a facet emphasised in some earlier recordings with fiercer sound and faster tempos. By slowing things down (this is by four minutes the slowest I have heard), Wallin brings out Pettersson’s intensity of expression even more powerfully than Hoelscher or Yamei Yu, magnified rather than contradicted by sheer beauty of tone.

The same applies to the miniatures filling out the album: the Two Elegies (1934), Andante espressivo (1938) and Romanza (1942), charming trifles for violin (Pettersson’s first instrument before he switched to viola) with piano – even more atmospherically played than by either listed rival below – that do not sound remotely like the Pettersson of the symphonies. Nor the Improvisations for string trio (1936), a marvellous, consonant suite that will beguile any innocent ear. Only Pettersson’s sole surviving piano piece, Lamento (1945), disappoints, despite Thomas Hoppe’s committed advocacy. BIS’s sound is superb.

— 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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Ulf Wallin (born 1960 in Växjö) is a Swedish classical violinist. He studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Since 1996, Wallin has held a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. Wallin has performed globally with prominent conductors and chamber musicians, appearing at esteemed venues and festivals. A prolific recording artist, he has made numerous radio, and television appearances and more than 50 CD recordings  for BIS, cpo, EMI and BMG labels. Wallin plays a violin by the Venetian master Domenico Montagnana from 1746.

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