Wilhelm Peterson-Berger - The Doomsday Prophets (Ulf Söderblom)

Information

Composer: Wilhelm Peterson-Berger

• The Doomsday Prophets (Excerpts)

Mikael Samuelson

Solveig Faringer

Thomas Sunnegårdh

Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra

Ulf Söderblom, conductor

Date: 1984/2006

Label: Sterling

-----------------------------------------------------------

Review

The Doomsday Prophets was the fourth of Wilhelm Peterson-Berger’s five operas and was composed between 1911 - when he completed the libretto - and 1917. It was moderately successful for a Swedish opera, being performed over twenty times at the Stockholm Opera following its premiere in 1919. It fell into near-total neglect after his death. Despite the portentous title, this is a comic opera, perhaps after the example of Die Meistersinger, with which it has occasionally been compared. As in Wagner’s opera, Peterson-Berger set his in Sweden’s past - although based on an apparently real event and featuring several historical characters - just before the close of the Thirty Years’ War in which Sweden became for a time a major European power. The opera has crowd scenes, disputes between academics, a bar brawl, a love triangle, the threat of ruin for several hard-working ordinary folk and some disagreeable minor nobles as well as the arrival of the Queen in the final scene to set everything to rights — all the elements a good comedy demands!

 

Set in the university city of Uppsala, the complex plot hangs on a wager between the professor, Bure - one of the real, historical personages - and the Queen’s apothecary, Simon Wolimhaus, as to when the world will end. The professor seems fated to lose and as a by-product of the terms of the wager the local innkeeper, Klas, and his daughter, Elin, will be evicted from their home. The flirtatious Elin is in love with the studious Lars who, because he is of peasant stock, is being bullied by the nobler students. Lars’s aunt is also endeavouring to match him with her own daughter. However, Lars gets himself arrested for threatening his tormentors with a pistol and is arraigned before a university tribunal from which he might well be expelled. This will dash his hopes of a career in the priesthood — well, he is descended from Vikings! — and marriage to Elin. All is saved through the timely intervention of a visiting army captain, Lennart Sporre, who proves to be the leading character of the opera. He it is who convinces Klas to let Elin marry Lars, if cleared, and who sets fire to Wolimhaus’ dog kennel which — and here things get really convoluted — invalidates the terms of the wager. This is because in the event of the world not ending when either ‘prophet’ predicted, Bure and Wolimhaus were to exchange all their property; as the fire devalues the latter’s effects the values are altered and the agreement nullified. Sporre it is who also convinces the populace and the visiting Queen that Lars should be pardoned.

 

The extracts given here are from an abbreviated performance made in January 1984 for a Swedish Radio broadcast. Why Sterling did not issue the entire work on (presumably) two discs, even in the reduced form, is not explained and regrettable as the music is certainly strong enough to stand being heard in toto. The thirteen excerpts, of varying lengths from between 2:17 and 21:27, assembled here provide a good overview of the essentials of the plot if not a coherent picture of the opera as a whole; the slightly untidy fadings in and out - necessary to cram as much on to the one disc as possible - and the jumps between scenes militates against this. There is a good deal of background noise - or special effects, if you will - to add a sense of the theatre to what was otherwise a studio recording: clinking crockery in the bar, the tamp of soldiers’ boots, incidental noises of crowds in the street, and so forth. As it is, Peterson-Berger’s music is bright and vivid, lyrical and charming by turns, its composer evidently dramatically aware, the whole sounding theatrically viable. The music, as in most comic operas, is not explicitly funny in itself, the opera being a comedy in the same way that Shakespeare’s comedies are, by ending happily and not in tragedy.

 

The cast acquit themselves with distinction, particularly Mikael Samuelson in the lead role of Captain Sporre. Solveig Faringer is breezy and girlish as Elin, Thomas Sunnegårdh stolidly ardent as the hot-headed Lars. There are many fine cameos - a result of the truncated performance - amongst the remainder, not least Bo Lundborg as the distracted Johan Bure. The orchestral accompaniment is sympathetically played under Ulf Söderblom’s sensitive direction and Sterling’s remastering of the 23-year-old sound more than acceptable. Stig Jakobson provides informative notes which, as with the libretto for those sections which are sung here, is presented in Swedish and English. They contain an interesting aside on the humiliating initiation rites students were forced to undergo — often in defiance of the law — in Swedish universities. What a shame that the entire work was not made available.

 

— Guy Rickards

-----------------------------------------------------------

Wilhelm Peterson-Berger (27 February 1867 — 3 December 1942) was a Swedish composer and music critic. Born in Ullånger, he studied at the Stockholm Conservatory and later in Dresden. Influenced by Richard Wagner, Edvard Grieg and Swedish folk music, Peterson-Berger composed five symphonies, five operas, choral works, songs, chamber music and piano pieces. His most famous works are three albums of national romantic piano pieces entitled Frösöblomster (Flowers of Frösö), which capture the spirit of the Swedish landscape. Peterson-Berger was also a respected though very controversial and conservative music critic.

***

Ulf Söderblom (5 February 1930 – 4 February 2016) was a Finnish conductor and music professor. Born in Turku, he studied at the Åbo Akademi University with Otto Andersson and the Vienna Music Academy with Hans Swarowsky. He began conducting for the Finnish National Opera in 1957, and in 1973 became its Chief Conductor and Music Director, a position he would hold for the next 20 years. He was also Artistic Director of the Helsinki Philharmonic (1978–79) and the Lahti Symphony (1984–87). As a music professor, Söderblom taught conducting at the Sibelius Academy and at the Åbo Akademi University.

-----------------------------------------------------------