Pettersson - Symphony No.6 (NSO, Lindberg [24bit FLAC]seeders: 17
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Pettersson - Symphony No.6 (NSO, Lindberg [24bit FLAC] (Size: 948.33 MB)
Description  Allan Pettersson: Symphony No. 6 (Nordiska Musikförlaget) Norrköping Symphony Orchestra Christian Lindberg (conductor) BIS-980 Stereo Classical - Orchestral The Six Symphony is, like the other symphonies, enigmatic, demanding much of its listeners. Pettersson's life was full of personal anguish and had a universal disgust with unfeeling Mankind. He said "The music forming my work is in my own life, its blessing, its curses...". Evidently, in this case, the curse was his acute suffering of rheumatoid arthritis for much of his life, which left him bereft of sleep, suffering at a time in which there were no effective remedies. The Sixth, like some of the other symphonies, has only one movement, lasting a few seconds short of an hour. Rising softly from the deep bass comes the devil's harmony, a tritone of B-F, heralding a slow introduction from the strings, which present some of the motifs later to be developed in the rest of the work. The movement has many sections, generally tonal but often characterised by almost obsessive repetition in various combinations. The large orchestra, well endowed with percussion, including tam-tam and bass drum, is given some highly unusual and characteristic textures in which the thematic material is embedded, and this is very much Pettersson's distinctive voice. Up to about 24' into the movement, all is anguish, agitation and desperation, as the composer was in a terrible state of health when he started the work, resulting in the longest gestation of any of his symphonies (1963-66). But a crisis is now reached, much as a fever finally breaks. A French horn plays a sad fanfare, handing it on to the rest of the brass, where it is punctuated by shrieks from the upper strings. The mood now becomes calmer, more lyrical and emotionally intense. There is even tenderness from a violin solo, developing into a long-breathed melody which progresses with various degrees of passion through the rest of the movement. In fact, this key melody is one from Pettersson's early Barefoot Songs (1943-45), titled "He Will Extinguish my Light". A Barber-like threnody for strings, glowingly played here, is accompanied by woodwind chords which suggest an irregular heartbeat. Birdsong calls return from part one of the movement, and although still progressing more or less steadily, the song becomes punctuated by stabbing staccato brass chords topped by triangle, building tension and moving forward into crescendo in quite a Sibelian way. Finally, the song is extinguished and the music slides back down to the depths from whence the symphony first emerged. It is the brilliance of Petersson's expression of the dichotomy between utter despair and life affirmation that illuminates the human condition in the symphony, making it deeply rewarding and thought-provoking. One also has to admire the stamina of the orchestra in concentrating for such a long sweep, and their intelligent and virtuosic execution of Lindberg's tautly-planned and effectively drawn arc of our musical journey. This is the first SA-CD in the BIS cycle, and the engineers provide it with a very appropriate immediacy, where all the detailed scoring makes its mark. The Louis de Geer Concert Hall in Norrköping supplies sufficient tonal bloom, but even in the 5.0 track the building does not have a distinctive reverberance sufficient to distance or muddy affairs. There is a good perspective, with the very active percussion band clearly at the back of the orchestra. Some listeners may find Pettersson's music daunting, but I would urge them to try. He spoke with passion and empathy about humanity, and given such beautiful sound capture, this disc of the Sixth, with its positive second half, might be a good place to start. Highly recommended. Copyright © 2012 John Miller and HRAudio.net Sharing Widget |