Johnny GRANDERT (1939-2019)
Symphony No 5 (1976) [26:39]
String Quartet No 4 (1991) [44:11]
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra/B Tommy Andersson; Vilnius String Quartet
rec. 1997, Stockholm: Berwald Hall (Symphony); Radiohuset (Quartet)
PHONO SUECIA PSCD 111 [70:50]
Johnny Grandert, composer of tonal music under modernistic strain, was also a painter, as the booklet to this disc demonstrates. He was born in Stockholm just months before the outbreak of the Second World War. His music teachers included Ingvar Lidholm. He was to extend the reach of his musical credentials with studies in Germany, Italy and the USA. Despite this he seems to be viewed predominantly as an autodidact. This factor was not an obstacle to him occupying exalted positions in one of the Swedish schools of music. His own music includes an opera, Gyllene jord (1984) and seven symphonies - 1 (1971), 2 (1973), 3 (1972), 4 (1974), 5 (1976), 6 (1982) and 7 (1996) - film music and much else.
His three-movement Fifth Symphony opens with flailing and gorgeously noisy climaxes. These speak enigmatically as if the from the end of a symphony rather than the start. We are confronted with a whirlwind of luxurious activity. The following Adagio is emollient and explores a lapping motion. This sustains the warm and hypnotic aspects of a stroll through alternately warm and then chilly shallows. The finale returns to the rolling thunder of the first movement. It’s another Allegro with a wild march woven in and ending with an abruptly snatched final chord. There we are: two unsettling yet satisfying Allegros divided from each other by a healing Adagio.
The Vilnius Quartet (Audrone Vainiunaite - violin 1; Petras Kunca - violin 2; Girdutis Jakaitis
- viola; Augustinas Vasiliauskas - cello) play the Fourth String Quartet. This is one of ten quartets that Grandert composed between 1963 and 1998. It is a work in three movements and is longer than the symphony by some 18 minutes. The buzzing and insistently malcontent activity of the first and finale movements suggest a supplicant wandering in a discouraging landscape. Only hardship is promised rather than benediction. The finale beckons the listener in with some minimalist pages and with some which have a blessed Rubbra-like character. The striking central movement is a mark of an evolution that is halting, faltering and then splenetically active. Overall, this seems a more severe work than the symphony, although that may have something to do with the medium. All the same, needles and razor blades are brandished.
If the Symphony is an essentially tonal escapee from the symphonies of Pettersson and Silvestrov the three-movement, 44-minute String Quartet can be likened to Berg and the later quartets of Bartók. It is the tougher of the two scores despite being separated from the symphony by only fifteen years.
Both performances feel utterly dedicated and have been skilfully and fulsomely recorded. The notes (in Swedish and English) by Björn Nilsson and Rolf Haglund hold the listener’s hand through what is likely to be an exploration rather than a rehearsal of old favourites. What chances are there that we might hear more of Grandert’s symphonies?
Rob Barnett
Editor’s note - this is not a new reissue.
