A genuine discovery—constantly inventive music of considerable achievement, for which Gérard Korsten obtains performances of real distinction from his orchestra.

First things first. Adolf Fredrik Lindblad was a Swede, born in Skänninge, not too far from Stockholm, in 1801. He was a precocious composer (with a flute concerto premiered at the age of 15) in a country where there was no real audience for serious symphonic composition, other than as middle-class divertissement. Sent to Germany to learn a trade, he returned to Sweden where, thanks to perceptive friends in Uppsala, he was sent back to Germany to study with Zelter in Berlin; another of Zelter 's pupils was one Felix Mendelssohn, and he and Lindblad became friends. On his return to Sweden, Lindblad founded and directed (until 1861) a piano school, composing vigorously all the while; he died in 1878.

Some of Lindblad's 200 songs later gained considerable popularity thanks to his pupil Jenny Lind with whom, P.-G. Bergfors's notes tell us, he had an affair. Those songs earned him the nickname of "the Swedish Schubert"—but the link with Schubert is not only a superficial one of similitude: Lindblad's two symphonies (written in 1831 and 1855) show that he also inherited something of Schubert's symphonic manner, though probably without actually knowing much (or any?) of the music.

The first movement of No. 1 wrestles with a thematic fragment from Beethoven's Ninth, and reminiscences of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Weber dart and weave through the textures here and elsewhere; Lindblad also shows himself to be particularly fond of the Beethovenian sforzato. The finale—which begins with a bright fugue—brings Lindblad closest to his slightly older contemporary Franz Berwald, especially when he uses the same driving rhythmic figures, stiffened by the trumpets, that Berwald so often deployed. The Second Symphony shows a quantum improvement in confidence: Right from the start of the Maestoso slow introduction of the first movement, there's a sense of power waiting to be released, confirmed by the energetic, optimistic sonata-allegro that follows, again with Berwaldian touches of color in an orchestration, which otherwise owes more to Beethoven and Mozart than anyone else. A dignified, though busy, Poco allegretto instead of slow movement (doubtless learned from Beethoven Seven) and a knockabout scherzo lead to a finale that shows Lindblad to have been following the progress of early Romanticism on the Continent—not that early by 1855, perhaps, but his sound world seems already to have been established by the time of the First Symphony. In its sheer buoyant, lively enthusiasm the closest relative of this Second Symphony of Lindblad's is Bizet's Symphony in C, written in exactly the same year—indeed, the two works sometimes sound uncannily alike, though it's almost 100% certain that Lindblad won't have been acquainted with the Bizet, which was completely unknown until its first performance in 1935 (just after it was discovered in Bizet's papers, bequeathed to the Paris Conservatoire by his wife's second husband).

A genuine discovery, this—constantly inventive music of considerable achievement, for which the South African conductor Gérard Korsten obtains performances of real distinction from his Swedish players. The sound isn't terribly polished, but who cares? The main thing is to put across the music in as lively and communicative manner as possible, and here they succeed admirably.

Good, bright sound with plenty of depth. Recommended with considerable enthusiasm, then, as another corner of musical history is uncovered.

-- Martin Anderson, FANFARE [11/1999]