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Peterson-Berger - better known on record for his symphonies - here demonstrates a sure dramatic hand. He has the ability to imbue ancient characters with a convincing vital humanity.

Arnljot is an eleventh century tale set in Jämtland in Sweden. Arnljot has been promised these many years to Gunhild. He has been away at sea a-viking. It's a long and convoluted saga but comes to a crown in Arnljot's conversion to Christianity. He suffers death in battle after a return to duty and to Gunhild.

There's a steady Delian-Tannhauser glow to Arnljot's Greeting while the romping and echoing fanfares of the Thing March make it a memorable entry. Waino's First Song is surgingly Puccinian - very exciting and delivered with a burning flame in the voice by Langebo. There is drama and nuance in the dialogue between Arnljot and Gunhild. The music is threaded through with the classic Swedish romantic impulse - listen to Hagegard in his long 'high hills' solo in the Encounter. The Dream Vision sports high strings pianissimo with colder ripples cross-cutting the texture. In its choral close there is a return to the confident singing gold of the Swedish lyrical mainstream. Tormod's Song is brief and another one of those stalwart bardic hymns: patriotic and yeoman sturdy. The Death of Arnljot is the longest track and closes the sequence in convincing form.

The words as sung in their original Swedish and with parallel English translation are in the booklet. There's also a note by that eminence of Swedish music, Lennart Hedwall who also provided the rounded concert-endings for these excerpts.

Arnljot was premiered in Stockholm on 13 April 1910. It is performed every year at the summer festival in the open air auditorium at Jämtland on the island of Frösö. Quite apart from two wondrously inventive and unmissably lyrical symphonies (2 and 3) there are other stage works: Ran, Domedagsprofeterna (1919) (there's an orchestral suite on CPO) and finally Adils und Elisif (1927).

This disc certainly leaves you wanting to hear the whole thing - why not record the next summer festival performance - maybe even a DVD?

The recording is now just over a quarter century old but holds up pretty well and certainly there is no distortion.

The Peterson-Berger Society can be contacted via their website.

Rob Barnett

Comment received:

I just read your review of the Arnljot highlights disc (originally issued by Swedish EMI). I bought the LP when it was first issued and a couple of years ago I transferred it to CD so I can now play it again without the pops and clicks.

Just a couple of comments: Erland Hagegård, the cousin of the better known Håkan Hagegård, a couple of years after this recording changed to tenor and was for some years one of the best in the country. I still think though that he should have remained baritone. His greeting song is rather impressive, though Sigurd Björling, the great Wagner singer in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, is even more monumental in his recording from early 1940s.

Concerning the annual Arnljot festival at Frösön, which started in 1935 and has been held every year since then, apart from the war years, this is not the opera that is performed but P-B's libretto as spoken drama and in line with P-B's wish all the actors are amateurs.

It is a long time since the opera was played, I believe it was 1960, when the Stockholm Opera mounted it with the original sets to mark 50 years since its first performance. Sixten Ehrling conducted and Sigurd Björling was Arnljot with a fine cast of assisting singers. It was broadcast and recorded by Swedish Radio and was once available as a 3-LP set on Caprice (CAP 1341-43), but has never been reissued on CD. I have never heard it but the technical quality is said to be OK. Who knows, some day it may pop up.

Goran Forsling

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