Comparative Reviews
Symphony 3
John
Phillips
Symphony 4
John
France
John
Phillips
Symphony 5
Rob
Barnett
Peterson-Berger's orchestral
music is warm and lyrical permeated
with the spirit if not the letter of
Swedish folksong.
While others contemplate
the prospect, CPO have seized the day.
This German company have built a justified
reputation for complete cycles produced
with both dogged determination and inspiration.
They do not go in for dutiful lacuna-filling.
There is life in their projects - there
has to be or they will pass by and wait
until the right moment and the right
collaboration … usually with one of
the European radio stations.
Who else than CPO would
have worked with the orchestras at Norrkoping
and Saarbrucken to produce the complete
symphonies and orchestral music of Wilhelm
PetersonBerger. For many years we had
to make do with just symphonies 2 and
3 and violin concerto on Swedish EMI.
Swedish company, Sterling adroitly recoded
symphonies 1 and 5 in 1996 and this
is still very much worth getting but
no one else has shown the resolve mustered
by CPO.
Across five CDs and
the period 1997 to 2003 we now have,
at a very attractive price, the complete
five symphonies plus the violin concerto
and a selection of suites, genre pieces,
romances and a suite of orchestrations
from his famous piano cycle Frösöblomster.
Reviews of the later
individual discs can be found on the
site and I confess that I have recycled
my own review of CD 5. The discs remain
available at CPO's usual low premium
price. However if you fancy a systematic
serious-minded exploration of the orchestral
works of one of Sweden's great romantic
voices this set is an easy choice.
The packaging is simple.
What we have is a card slip-case sleeve
into which the five individual CDs have
been inserted straight off the CPO warehouse
shelves. Simple and inspired - it matches
their Atterburg, Rangstrom, Toch and
Frankel projects.
The First Symphony
is a charmer: sunny, pastoral, easy
on the ear and not at all afflicted
with tragedy at least not until we reach
the third movement: At the hero’s
bier which offers a grieving interlude.
However we soon return to the rustic
chivalry of Ludolf Nielsen, Goldmark,
Raff and Bizet. Here is a composer with
a light graciousness of touch. The finale
ends with a briefly portentous farewell.
The Suite I Somras
(Last Summer) is in six
movements each with a pastoral title.
While CPO's notes claim the influence
of Grieg I really do not hear it. However
the writing does show a mastery and
imagination above that of the First
Symphony. This is warm writing with
little or nothing of the nineteenth
century about it. There is even the
occasional Delian touch as in the little
fanfare figures in Squirrel and Wood
Pigeon. Hushed leaf-rustling magic
haunts the pages of The Pine Forest
- superbly done by Jurowski and
his Saarbrucken orchestra. The Mountain
Stream's bubbling and trickling
progress is most imaginatively and quietly
put across. Chanting woodwind and pizzicato
here suggest a work lying in the future:
de Falla's Nights in the Gardens
of Spain. After a brief climax the
gentle magical orchestration returns
and ends the suite in what seems like
a summery evening. The movement is not
perhaps the most effective with which
to end the suite; it is the shortest
of the six. The suite would make help
make up a nice themed concert with Bax's
Tale the Pine Trees Knew, Respighi's
Pines of Rome and Arnold's The
Larches not to mention the forest
tone-poems of Lilburn and Glazunov.
The Second Symphony
is a captivating work - impulsive
and exhilarating. It conveys the sense
if childhood summer mornings in the
second movement. There are plenty of
woodwind solos, harp idylls and murmurous
reflections. Galloping delight very
similar in the middle movement to Howard
Hanson (child of an expatriate Swedish
family) in his First Symphony The
Nordic.
The Romance
is for violin and orchestra. It proceeds
at an easy lope but warms to romantic
passion rather than fireworks – in this
sense it is similar to the Stenhammar
romances and the Chausson Poème.
Oriental Dance
is an early work and this certainly
does show the influence of Grieg. It
predates oriental efforts by Atterburg
and Nielsen.
The Overture or Forspel
to the ill-fated and now lost cantata
Sveagaldrar is a thing
of Ruritanian pomp and then of waltz-time
sentimentality and luxurious dewy romance.
PB loved the great
outdoors and often went on walking expeditions
through the Swedish mountains. The Same
Atnam symphony, his third, was
written in 1913-15. It is another idyllic
piece but with a hard glint imparted
by orchestral piano, harp and string
pizzicato. Lilting melodies of heartbreaking
simplicity were part of his stock-in-trade
and we hear them throughout this work
which rejoices in its chamber textures.
The Lapp folk element is apparently
to be sensed in the treatment rather
than any direct quotations. The first
movement has its echoes of Tchaikovsky
5 and at the beginning a striking prediction
of the RVW Fifth Symphony from
almost forty years later. The second
movement has a unique 'hiccuping' introduction
then launches into a night-ride evocation
of a horse-drawn sledge. Later it almost
echoes Rimsky’s Russian Easter Festival.
The third movement is descriptive of
a Scandinavian summer-night, warm, yearning
for delight and once again the prese3nce
of that tinkling solo piano. The finale,
Dreams of the Future, draws music
that is resolute and confident. Once
again that solo piano recalls a contemporaneous
work, Bax's Symphonic Variations.
All ends not in symphonic clamour but
in a modest falling to rest. Thank you
Stig Jacobsson for telling us that Stokowski
performed the symphony in Philadelphia
in 1927.
Like I somras,
the suite Earina - concerned
with spring, renewal and pagan ritual
- derives from a piano suite of which
PB wrote many. He wrote the piano suite
of this name in 1917. That ha d seven
movements where this has five. The music
is light of tread yet seriously reflective
of the composer's delight in things
of the summery months.
The Chorale and
Fugue from Domesdagprofeterna can
be heard in context in the recently
released Sterling CD of excerpts
from the opera. Here it communicates
as a grave and subdued hymn followed
by the Fugue which is an intermezzo
extracted by Gunnar Johannsson from
the opera to create this bipartite concert
item. It's a fairly sombre affair overall
quite at odds with the opera itself
which is a lyrical and brightly polished
optimistic fantasy.
There is a third suite
for orchestra called Italiana but
the orchestral version of that has been
lost.
The fourth disc has
the Fourth Symphony Holmia
as its centrepiece. It's the shortest
of the symphonies and is in three movements.
It is an emotional personal portrait
of the Swedish capital. Holmia is
a fanciful latin name for Stockholm.
The writing is full of grace and is
sometimes flighty, effervescent and
often given to poetic reflection. It
sometimes evokes memories of Alfvén's
rhapsodies and is in the same spirit
as say the symphonies of Weber and Bizet
although with a modern Swedish nationalist
accent. Certainly it's not a conventionally
serious symphony so listeners should
prepare themselves for something in
the nature of a charmingly well-formed
suite rather than anything more ambitious.
This is its first complete recording.
Lyckan or
Happiness is a musical fairytale
based on Sleeping Beauty. The
suite has the title Törnrossagan
(The Story of Sleeping Beauty).
It dates from 1903, the same year as
his PB’s opera Ran. It's in ten
movements with music as charming as
that in Holmia. Voices to
be glimpsed in this high-flown, light,
bombastic, dreamy and sentimental music
include Tchaikovsky, Glazunov, Delibes
and Massenet. Jurowski points the music
very neatly.
Continuing the mood
we come to the composer's 1934 orchestration
of five movements from his 1890s piano
cycle Frösöblomster
(The Flowers of Frösö).
The instrumentation is as light as down
- the composer knew these were fragile
beauties which required careful colouring.
That's exactly what they get. They are
again delightful with echoes of Tchaikovsky,
early Delius, Massenet and Grieg. It's
no surprise that the movement markings
include the words grazia, leggiero,
semplice and dolce.
Finally there's the
second ever complete recording of the
Fifth Symphony. The first
was released in 1997 by Bo Hyttner's
Sterling label (CDS-1006-2) where the
even more generous coupling is the world
premiere recording of the First Symphony.
After a graciously stop-start little
scherzando comes an oboe-ushered andante
tranquillo reminiscent of Butterworth's
Banks of Green Willow but soon
developing an almost Graingerian harmonium
tone. The finale is sparklingly rumbustious
with folk-dance excitingly woven around
alternating jollity and heroism. All
ends in a series of silver-dripping
bardic harp arpeggios. On balance I
prefer Jurowski for his greater vitality.
His first movement is five minutes shorter
than Jurowski's 14:39; mind you the
tempo indication is con moto tranquillo.
The CPO recording is also a shade less
transparent.
The Violin Concerto
was completed five years earlier,
having been started in 1912. Nilla Pierrou
recorded it in October 1967. The Pierrou
recording is still the only alternative
to this Wallin version. The Pierrou
is on Phono-Suecia ECHO PSCD 95 (previously
released on Swedish HMV LP CSDS 1083)
and it is coupled with the best of the
Peterson-Berger symphonies No. 2 Sunnanfärd
(Journey to the South). The
concerto has that searching and singing
soul associated with the Delius Violin
Concerto but is touched also with the
Glazunov, the Dvořák,
sometimes the Elgar .... and, surprisingly
often, the Bax. A stamping thudding
gusto (Des Irae from Verdi's
Requiem) forms the backdrop to the opening
pages of the finale over which the violin
sings at first peacefully then develops
a more animated chattering and darting
spirit which often sounds slightly Chinese
(probably influenced by Turandot).
In the Pierrou version the soloist is
recorded very closely - you won’t miss
a detail but dynamic contrast is ironed
out. It has no shortage of impact and
a real grip on your lapels but the orchestra
on occasion slips backwards into a generalised
focus. Top marks for virile immediacy
but less so for poetic distance.
So ends CPO's admirable
project to build a complete Peterson-Berger
orchestral series. A resoundingly successful
outcome.
Rob Barnett