Allan PETTERSSON (1911-1980)
Vox Humana, cantata for soloists, choir and string orchestra (1974) [51:46]
Six Songs (1935), arranged for baritone, string orchestra and harp by Staffan Storm [17:27]
Anna Greelius (alto), Conny Thimander (tenor), Kristina Hellgren (soprano), Jakob Högström (baritone)
Ensemble SYD
Musica Vitae/Daniel Hansson
Rec. May 2016, Palladium, Malmö, Sweden
Sung texts and translations included
CPO 999 286-2 [69:26]
I’ve spent four decades struggling manfully to get some vestige of a handle on Allan Pettersson’s grand symphonic schemes; to little avail, alas. As an admirer of contemporary Nordic music in general he’s one of those composers one assumes one should both ‘like’ and ‘get’; if fleeting episodes in some of his symphonies (the less ‘fashionable’ ones in my case – 2, 3, 5 and 12) seem both likeable and affecting, most of the time I flounder. The bigger, supposedly more important statements (Nos 6, 7, 8, 9 and 13) have consistently eluded both my grasp and affection, and not through want of trying. There is simply too much happening for my addled brain to compute, too many densely structured ‘bits’ which succeed one another at times with dizzying rapidity, never to return. And yet the very ‘sound’ of these works leaves one in little doubt of the sincerity of their hard-pressed creator.
I have tended to find Petterson’s ‘non-symphonies’ more to my taste. To my ears his last completed work, the viola concerto is unequivocally a masterpiece, yet it’s been recorded just once to date (by Nobuko Imai on BIS - CD480); in that work he somehow condenses the inherent sense of struggle common to his biggest symphonies into a measured, concise dialogue of just half an hour. I am also rather fond of the Barefoot Songs, the three concertos for string orchestra, and the sonatas for two violins. And I have certainly enjoyed this new CPO disc; it features the late cantata Vox Humana and a sequence of early songs in new orchestrations. Not unexpectedly with this composer, the texts in both cases oscillate between the gloomy and the sardonic. Yet there is an element of Nordic freshness throughout which is to be found infrequently to say the least in his sixteen and a bit symphonies.
According to the helpful chronology provided in the CPO booklet, the set of Six Songs from 1935 amount to Pettersson’s second ‘official’ composition and emerged before he undertook any period of formal study. Andreas K W Meyer suggests in his note that they betray little hint of the mature composer and instead derive their character from the texts themselves and the composer’s absorption of earlier models, especially French song and inevitably Sibelius. The latter casts his cool, imposing shadow over Staffan Storm’s assured orchestration of the opening Det blir stilla da krakorna dör (It Becomes Quiet when the Crows Die), whilst the spirit of Edvard Grieg seems to haunt the tiny En visa I enhamset (A Song in Loneliness). Gallic influences are at work elsewhere; the gloomy Resignation for example is leavened by an unmistakeably Ravelian countenance. Despite their pessimistic mien these songs are unequivocally charming and benefit greatly from Jakob Högström’s affecting and superbly controlled baritone.
Hösgtröm is also one of the four principals recruited for the main event, the 50 minute cantata Vox Humana; at first hearing it may not sound especially monumental in scale but there is no doubting the seriousness and depth at its heart, a profundity which is certainly at one with this composer’s symphonic canon. The Pettersson chronology reveals that Vox Humana was one of two pieces completed in 1974; the other was the Twelfth Symphony De Döda på torget (The Dead of the Square). Both incorporate vocal settings of discomfiting Latin-American texts – the Chilean poet’s Pablo Neruda’s epic commemoration of the victims of a politically motivated massacre in Santiago in 1946 is the subject of the symphony, whilst the cantata taps into a ‘Who’s Who?’ of South American poets such as Roberto Fernández Retamar, Manuel Bandeira and Nicolás Guillén as well as Neruda. Each of these works indubitably reveal Pettersson’s prowess as a composer for both solo and choral vocal forces; whilst the symphony is inevitably denser and more complex than Vox Humana I suspect new listeners will be sufficiently impressed by both efforts to regret that Pettersson produced so little for the voice.
Vox Humana is scored for four solo singers, choir and strings. It incorporates a rather asymmetrical tripartite structure; the first part is subtitled Fourteen Songs after Latin-American Workers’ Poetry and accounts for roughly two-thirds of the duration of the whole, whilst the last involves a single ten-minute setting of Neruda’s self-justificatory work The Great Joy. Separating them is a brief panel in which Pettersson sets three tiny verses ‘after old Indian poetry’.
From the opening bars of Död natt (Dead Night) listeners familiar with the symphonies will likely be wrong-footed by a sound world which is defiantly at odds with those sprawling canvasses; spare, cool-night-air string textures and a dark yet directly communicative vocal line – here it’s the alto Anna Grevelius. The CPO engineers have certainly bathed the excellent string players of Musica Vitae in a pleasing, clean ambience. Equally transparent is the Ballad which follows directly; it’s an ironic number about imminent death which features Conny Thimander’s assertive tenor and a mellifluous yet haunted unaccompanied choir. It sounds freshly-minted and unaffected; I am bound to ask – where has this Pettersson been hiding during my forty listening years? Next up is a chilling aria for soprano (the silver-voiced Kristina Hellgren) and strings; För en kort minut (For One Brief Moment) is Retamar’s pithy, aphoristic exploration of the paranoia experienced by an individual living beneath the shadow of a repressive regime –it’s particularly affecting in Hellgren’s tastefully understated delivery. And then it’s the turn of the baritone Jakob Högström, here accompanied by Musica Vitae’s violas and cellos in En man gar förbi (A man goes by). César Vallejo’s deeply sarcastic text plays off the meaningless intellectual sensibilities of the middle classes against the day-to-day realities which face what we used to call the ‘underclass’. Again the trick is Pettersson’s apparent insouciance in his tuneful yet cold, almost dead music. Högström’s delivery is aptly shoulder-shrugging.
By now the listener has acclimatised to the forces and formulae Pettersson deploys throughout Vox Humana. It proves to be an approachable, fastidiously crafted work in which nary a note is wasted. The composer conjures a remarkable variety of colour and nuance from his relatively spartan forces. The forces required change abruptly between each number. The dense weave of unaccompanied choral writing in Dikt häntad från en tidningsnotis (Poem after a Newspaper Item, No 7) yields to the light danceability of the strings in Dikt till en död vän (Poem to a Dead Friend, No 8). The chilling references to the American Deep South in Nicolás Guillén’s Lynch (no 10) hit home unerringly, not least because of the restrained, accessible nature of Pettersson’s writing.
The final act of Vox Humana is Den stora glädjen (The Great Joy) in which Neruda seems to set out his artistic objectives and describe his aspirations for his spiritual legacy. Pettersson sets the poem for just choir and strings. While the harmonies may be tart and peculiar, they emerge from the seamlessly blended voices of Ensemble SYD with striking clarity and colour. This is without question a superb body of singers, and their unwavering delivery of this rather cumbersome text is testament to what must have been intensive preparation. Their sound is aptly complimentary to Pettersson’s intriguing string writing which melds astringency with warmth.
Conductor Daniel Hansson has fashioned an account of this unwieldy yet affecting cantata which radiates conviction and profound comprehension. I have since listened to an earlier recording of Vox Humana with Swedish forces under Stig Westerberg (BIS CD-55 – review); that performance is of comparable stature but the 1976 recording shows its age – the CPO engineering on the new disc is the clincher for me. The booklet on the other hand is a bit of a puzzle; there is an introductory paragraph about Vox Humana which contains no information about the cantata whatsoever. I really liked both these works; I heartily recommend the disc as an entry level introduction to a forbidding yet fascinating composer. I certainly wish it had provided my own ‘way in’ to Pettersson forty years ago – those middle symphonies might not have proved so forbidding after all.
Richard Hanlon
