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, Gramophone

More reviews:
https://artmusiclounge.wordpress.com/2020/12/17/lindberg-conducts-pettersson/

https://www.amazon.com/Symphony-12-Swedish-Radio-Choir/dp/B08NF1QS9L

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Allan Pettersson (19 September 1911 – 20 June 1980) was a Swedish composer and violist. Pettersson studied violin and viola at the conservatory of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and composition in Paris with René Leibowitz, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen, and Darius Milhaud. Today he is considered one of the most important Swedish composers of the 20th century. His symphonies developed a devoted international following, starting in the final decade of his life. Most of his music has now been recorded at least once and much of it is now available in published score.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Pettersson

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Christian Lindberg (born 15 February 1958 in Danderyd) is a Swedish trombonist, conductor and composer. Lindberg studied with John Iveson at the Royal College of Music (1979–1980) and with Ralph Sauer and Roger Bobo in Los Angeles (1983). In 2000, Lindberg made his conducting debut with the Northern Sinfonia in the UK and is currently principal conductor of the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also chief conductor of the Nordic Chamber Orchestra (2005–2010) and the Swedish Wind Ensemble (2005–2012). Lindberg has recorded over 60 albums, for BIS and other labels such as Onyx.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Lindberg

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