The Swedish Smorgasbord in Orchestral Music
rec. 1955-81, transferred from Sterling LPs
Texts and translations included
STERLING CDS1129 [57:59 + 58:44]
Trust Sterling to come on strong with its alliterative title. What’s next, one wonders; a Finnish Fondue in Chamber Music? This twofer, in any case, does largely return to the fondue decade of the 1970s when Sterling LPs reflected a new-found enthusiasm for the country’s musical heritage and when Bo Hyttner, the label’s executive producer – whose one-page reminiscence in the booklet is jovial and droll – was a motivational force for good in organising and recording so much of this repertoire.
Fortunately, each LP from which the music has been extracted, is carefully noted in the booklet, should you have Sterling vinyl still on your shelves. And Hyttner has been scrupulous in his selection policy not to ignore earlier repertoire in favour of perhaps more crowd-pleasing music from the twentieth century. Thus, balance is maintained over a less than two-hour programme.
Things run very roughly by the composers’ dates of birth, starting with Johan Agrell’s Sinfonia in F major for strings and without, here, the ‘oboes and French horn ad lib’. This galant work, written earlier than William Boyce’s similarly three-movement symphonies, is genial and warm. By contrast, convivial and lively sums up August Söderman’s Swedish Festival which dates from 1867. Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Sweden’s Hanslick in his guise as a critic, is represented by three pieces. The earliest is May Carnival in Stockholm, a terpsichorean charmer, whilst Autumn Song, revised in 1936, six years before his death, is brief though lustrous with a rapture seldom encountered in such concentrated form in his music. The central piece by him comes from 1898 and is larger in scope. Oscar Levertin’s poem Florez and Blanzeflor had been set some seven years earlier by Stenhammar and later Henning Mankell and Oscar Lindberg were to turn to it. But Peterson-Berger’s ten-minute opus utilises Wagnerian elements in this romantic ballad for baritone soloist, here the excellent Erik Saedén, in this 1980 recording with Björn Hallman conducting the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. The notes are right to ascribe the influence to the Wagner of the Wesendonck-lieder, rather than anything more Ring-like.
Alfvén’s deftly affecting Andante religioso is often performed as a stand-alone orchestral piece and comes from his Revelation Cantata of 1913. There’s more processional and festive music from Ruben Liljefors and the first disc ends with the substantial Symphonic Prologue by Adolf Wiklund. Here late-Romanticism meets Sibelius to good effect, not least in those chattering string ostinatos and fine orchestration.
Sten Frykberg was a strong presence in Sterling’s catalogue of the time. He conducted the Agrell, and the Alfvén and he proves to be an equally strong presence in the second disc. He directs the pithy orchestral scenes penned by Lars-Erik Larsson for The Winter’s Tale in 1938 as well as Albert Henneberg’s overture to Bolla och Badin, a wartime composition that the notes aptly describe as rococo pastiche. The notes, by the way, are taken from Carl-Gunnar Åhlén’s LP sleeve notes, to which some edits and expansions have been made. Another pithy verdant piece is Sven Sköld’s Summer. Sven-Eric Johanson’s Variations on a Varmland grouse lek is again in Frykberg’s hands and is as quixotic as the composer himself in his booklet photograph; hair of Einstein, moustache of Salvador Dali. His music has similar striking juxtapositions. Which leaves Bo Linde. His Prelude e Finale (1955) is crisp and artful, with hints of Britten’s string writing. The Piano Concerto comes from the same year and is played by the composer with Gunnar Staern conducting the Gävleborgs Orkesterförening. Both the Linde works were recorded live, the Prelude e Finale in 1977 but the concerto is in mono in 1955 at the Gävle Theatre. There are Bartökian elements in the concerto and a central variations movement on a charmingly naive children’s song that become fuller, richer and more complex. Though the finale is rather scattershot it’s a substantial work, exuberantly dispatched.
This entertaining twofer is, indeed, something of a smorgasbord, as it turns out, offering a wide array of nutritious fare across the centuries and in a number of different orchestral genres. It offers a fine tribute to the pioneers of this recorded legacy, conductors, orchestras, soloists and of course the hard-working Sterling team.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review: Göran Forsling
Contents
Johan AGRELL (1701-1765?)
Sinfonia in F major, Op 1 No 6 (c 1740) [8:05]
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/Sten Frykberg
August SÖDERMAN (1832-1876)
Swedish Festival (1867) [7:07]
Wilhelm PETERSON-BERGER (1867-1942)
May Carnival in Stockholm (1892) [5:45]
Florez and Blanzeflor (1898) [9:53]
Autumn Song (1896/1936) [4:16]
Erik Saedén (baritone)/Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Björn Hallman
Hugo ALFVÉN (1872-1960)
Revelation Cantata; Andante religioso, Op 31 (1913) [4:19]
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/Sten Frykberg
Ruben LILJEFORS (1871-1936)
Frithiof and Ingeborg: Sacrificial Procession, Op 17 (1916) [2:53]
Festival (1932) [4:07]
Gävle Symphony Orchestra/Göran W Nilson
Adolf WIKLUND (1879-1950)
Symphonic Prologue (1934) [11:34]
Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra/Björn Hallman
Lars-Erik LARSSON (1908-1986)
Four Vignettes for Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’,
Op 18 (1938) [10:05]
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/Sten Frykberg
Sven SKÖLD (1899-1956)
Summer (1938) [3:55]
Antonio Nicolini (violin)/Västeräs Symphony Orchestra/Harry Damgaard
Albert HENNEBERG (1901-1991)
Bolla och Badin, overture, Op.32 (1942) [4:22]
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/Sten Frykberg
Bo LINDE (1933-1970)
Concerto No 1 for piano and strings, Op 12 (1955) [22:54]
Bo Linde (piano)/Gävleborgs Orkesterförening/Gunnar Staern
Prelude e Finale, Op 16 (1955) [11:01]
Västeräs Symphony Orchestra/Harry Damgaard
Sven-Eric JOHANSON (1919-1997)
Variations on a Varmland grouse lek (1963) [6:27]
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra/Sten Frykberg
