With this disc Sterling’s
Bo Hyttner once again makes major inroads
into unrecorded Scandinavian territory.
The Three Dalecarlian
Paintings have about them a guileless
rural courtliness with a Prelude that
to English ears hints at the Miller
of Dee. There is a dreamily sumptuous
Night over the Forest coloured
by Tchaikovskian swooning and a Game
movement that waltzes with a beguiling
smile. This is all unassuming music
buoyant with gentle charm and a redolence
of Smetana's Ma Vlast.
Five years later Lindberg
gave us the Festal Polonaise which
harbours an oompah waltz beat and a
grand sweep. One or two moments point
towards early Tchaikovsky.
From Home was
written in 1933 and premiered that year
by Vaclav Talich. It must be remembered
that for Lindberg home was Dalecarlia.
In the case of the present work three
regional melodies are woven in. A long
and glowingly romantic preface unfolds
with warm and steady Delian confidence.
Grieg is also an influence amid all
this leisurely romantic nationalism.
Music of stormy majesty can be heard
at 9:45. Lambent writing for strings
and the cresting heroism of the brass
writing make an impression in this rhapsodic
tone poem. It ends with a bubbling reminiscence
of the melody first heard in the prelude
to the Three Dalecarlian Portraits.
The Leksand Suite
is in three artless movements derived
from the folk music of Leksand region.
Once again Lindberg reminds us of the
manner of George Butterworth's tone
poems and Vaughan Williams’ Folksong
Suite, In The Fen Country and Norfolk
Rhapsodies. The middle movement, Song,
was written for the funeral of the Nobel
prize winning poet Erik Axel Karlfeldt.
Its steadily bleached out sighing parallels
that in Tchaikovsky's Pathétique.
The Polska finale is cheery and
mercurial with some nice work for the
woodwind solos at 2.11 onwards. It ends
with a conventional folksy flourish.
Gesunda is Lindberg's
last work and dates from 1947. The title
refers to the mountain which looks down
towards Lake Silja. The character of
the piece suggests a contented cradling.
The music muses and murmurs. In all
those years Lindberg’s style had not
moved on. The writing becomes optimistic,
ebullient and rhapsodic, alive with
dance rhythms and, at the last, a delightful
crepuscular wistfulness, languishing
and sighing.
The notes by Stig Jacobsson
are typically exemplary.
Relaxed and relaxing
Swedish pastoral nationalism from one
of the idiom's leading Swedish practitioners.
Rob Barnett
Gävle Symphony Orchestra/Michael Bartosch
