Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov stands out among the major works of the opera repertoire in having an extremely complex creative history. The original libretto, by the composer himself, was based closely on Pushkin’s Shakespeare-inspired drama about the ill-fated Russian ruler. Mussorgsky completed the score in 1869, and submitted it to the committees of the Imperial Theatres. It was rejected, however, primarily because of the lack of a female lead and therefore a love interest, but Mussorgsky’s unadorned style has also been mentioned as a reason. In 1871 the composer therefore reworked the opera extensively, adding new scenes – and a female principal in the form of the Polish princess Marina Mniszek – and changing the overall structure from seven scenes into a prologue and four acts. The revised Boris was completed in 1872, and two years later it was finally performed in St Petersburg, while the Moscow audience had to wait until 1888, seven years after the death of its composer. In order to promote the work, Mussorgsky’s colleague and friend Rimsky-Korsakov undertook to revise the work, making the orchestration more traditional and colorful and softening a number of harsh harmonies. It was the Rimsky-Korsakov version that took the opera out of Russia and without it, the opera would not be as widely known as it is today. In recent times, however, several opera houses have begun performing the more abrasive original version from 1869, and it is this ‘Ur-Boris’ that has been recorded here. It is performed by the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra under its principal guest conductor, Kent Nagano. They are joined by a cast of mainly Russian vocal soloists, headed by Alexander Tsymbalyuk as Boris, a role he performed under Nagano already in 2013 at the Bayerische Staatsoper. In the opera, as in Pushkin’s drama, the Russian people plays a hugely important role – here performed by the Göteborg Opera Chorus.

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REVIEWS:

Tsymbalyuk’s young-sounding Tsar is beautifully sung, gaining in intensity from the scene in the Kremlin onwards; but the developing extremity of his emotional responses is never overdone and his death scene remains restrained, with no scenery-chewing.

– Opera

This new account, based on live performances, is beautifully sung and played, and recorded in surround sound. Although one can nitpick many aspects of this recording, there is much to enjoy. It is especially valuable to now have a recording of the opera as Mussorgsky first intended it.

– MusicWeb International

Born in Prague in 1737, Josef Myslivecek spent most of his short life in Italy, where for a while he enjoyed success with his many operas, and became known as ‘Il Boemo’ (‘The Bohemian’). It was also in Italy – in Bologna – that he first met Mozart, in 1770. Their paths would cross again and in letters Mozart wrote about him with affection, describing him as full of ‘fire, spirit and life’. Myslivecek’s influence is apparent in Mozart’s early operas, violin concertos, symphonies and keyboard music. His music soon fell out of fashion, however, and it is only recent decades that have seen more interest in works such as the wind octets, violin concertos and symphonies. In comparison, Myslivecek’s output for keyboard has been somewhat neglected, something which the English pianist Clare Hammond seeks to rectify with her latest disc. The keyboard concertos in particular have barely seen the light of day since Myslivecek’s death and the second concerto is recorded for the first time on this album which gathers all of the extant keyboard works. Clare Hammond, whose imaginative recording projects on BIS have received international acclaim, is here supported in the concertos by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, conducted by no one less than Nicholas McGegan, whose expertise in 18th-century style is undisputed.

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REVIEWS:

The two compact concertos have a sparky grace that comes across buoyantly in these performances. Schnabel’s old adage about Mozart’s piano sonatas – “too easy for children, and too difficult for artists” – would come to mind for Myslive?ek’s Divertimenti, were it not for the perfectly judged tone that Hammond strikes with them, preserving their seemingly artless charm while finding a striking profundity in their simplicity.

– Guardian

Sprightliness abounds in the concertos and short pieces gathered here, delivered with deliciously unfussy poise and elegance on a modern Steinway, crisply supported by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and the conductor Nicholas McGegan.

– Sunday Times (UK)

Classical Music

A Gramophone Editor's Pick, shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards!

Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius, alongside Grieg the two giants in Nordic classical music, were both born in 1865. Both also received their first musical training on the violin, earning valuable insights when it came to writing for the instrument. Their respective violin concertos were composed some six years apart – Sibelius’ in 1904-05 and Nielsen’s in 1911 – and belong to the most performed works of either composer. They are nevertheless as different from each other as are the artistic temperaments of their makers. While retaining the traditional three-movement concerto form, Sibelius composed something closer to a Late-Romantic orchestral tone poem giving the orchestra unusual prominence. Nielsen on the other hand opted for an unconventional form, reminiscent of the Baroque concerto grosso: the spiky, neoclassical work is nominally in two movements, but with each movement having a slow and a fast section. These works are here performed by Johan Dalene, the Swedish-Norwegian winner of the 2019 Nielsen Competition. The present disc is the 21 year old violinist’s third release on BIS, following a recording of the Tchaikovsky Concerto described as ‘one of the finest violin débuts of the last decade’ in BBC Music Magazine, and an all-Nordic violin-and-piano recital awarded distinctions such as Diapason d’or and Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice. Dalene is given the expert support of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor John Storgårds, incidentally a violin soloist in his own right.

REVIEWS:

"Dalene returns to a work we already know he excels in, and this deeply intuitive, instinctive and empathetic recording again demonstrates his remarkable touch and feel, and the way he balances discipline and playfulness." -The Sunday Times

"For my money, there’s no finer coupling of these highly contrasting yet much-associated concertos on record. I suspect the individual performances could well prove superlative for many listeners, too." -Gramophone

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.



At last, a modern Nielsen to lead the field - and a future classic?

There are eight or so modern accounts of the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto in the catalogue, plus a few no less impressive that have come and gone. Most have fine qualities. Yet for sureness of idiomatic touch none dislodges Ib Erikson’s classic 1954 Danish accounts.

Closer to the mark than any modern rivals is this new issue from Martin Fröst, the clarinettist of the moment for all-round artistry allied to adventurous approach to repertoire. He seems to have Nielsen’s irascible masterpiece in his bloodstream, as surely as he has its technical contortions under his fingers. Vänskä ensures that the Lahti players are never fazed by the exposed edges in the accompaniment, and only the very drawn-out final bars come across as slightly self-conscious. Detail for detail, phrase for phrase, I would have to give this team the palm over the old Danish recording, even before considering BIS’s immeasurably superior sound quality. Even so, Erikson and Wöldike remain a benchmark for insight into the character of the piece.

Kalevi Aho’s Concerto starts arrestingly but without a trace of the attention-seeking that afflicts certain other clarinet concertos of recent times. There is something in Aho’s five continuous movements that recalls Nielsen’s directness and free-flowing succession of ideas, and the cadenza that forms the second movement even brings momentary echoes of Nielsen’s uncompromising skirls and flourishes. But the Finn’s sights are set more on the starkly elemental than on the quirkily personal. For Aho the Vivace con brio third movement is the “centre and culmination”, and it is certainly exuberant – dangerous, even – in its restless virtuosity, rather like Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel driven mad by inner demons. After this a sad slow movement brings sober reflection, and an Epilogue concludes the work on a note of mystery.

Few would now question the status of the Nielsen as the finest clarinet concerto of the 20th century. Time will tell with Kalevi Aho’s concerto in the 21st. In the short term it will probably daunt as many prospective soloists and orchestras as Nielsen’s work did in its time. But there can have been few equally impressive head-on engagements with the concerto medium in recent years. In sum, a CD of rare distinction.

-- David Fanning, Gramophone [5/2007]

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The recently released second volume of the Carl Nielsen symphony cycle from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Sakari Oramo has already met with acclaim similar to that for the first disc: ‘an ideal blend of fieriness and loving care’ was how the performances of the First and Third Symphonies were characterized by a reviewer on Norddeutscher Rundfunk, and on BBC Radio 3 CD Review the disc was described as ‘an impressive second volume from what's turning into a must-hear Nielsen cycle.’ The last instalment of the cycle opens with the composer’s Symphony No.2, ‘The Four Temperaments’, dating from 1901–02. Its origins were in an allegorical picture Nielsen came across in a country inn, illustrating the four temperaments of man as defined in Greco-Roman medicine: anger, apathy, melancholy and carefree abandon. But Nielsen was incapable of drawing anything other than a rounded character-portrait, and consequently the fiery first movement also allows for lyrical episodes, there are moments of stoic nobility in the melancholy, and the march that conclude the sanguine finale is imbued with a certain dignity. 23 years later the composer completed his sixth and final symphony, giving it the subtitle Sinfonia semplice (Simple Symphony). In the meantime, the Fourth and Fifth symphonies had brought Nielsen the greatest measure of professional recognition he ever enjoyed in his lifetime. In spite of its subtitle, Symphony No.6 baffled reviewers as well as audiences, however. When beginning to work on it Nielsen had envisaged a work that would be ‘quite idyllic in character’ – something that is borne out by the opening bars. But by the time he arrived at the last movement, Theme and variations, the work had taken a different course, and as Nielsen later told a friend, the ninth and last variation, scored for tuba and percussion, represents ‘death knocking at the door’.

This is very, very good. We seem to be going through a particularly satisfying period as regards Nielsen symphonies on SACD. First we had Gilbert’s cycle with the New York Philharmonic on Dacapo, and now we have this sterling second installment of Oramo’s, containing the First and Third Symphonies. Both works receive marvelous readings, with world class playing from the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and interpretations that propel the music forward with all of its muscular energy and lyrical intensity.

The First Symphony is, in this respect, perhaps a more remarkable (but not “better”) performance than the Third. Usually the work gets damned with faint praise: “early Nielsen;” “Brahms praised it;” and the like. Here the music sounds fully mature, the outer movements played with such verve that their tendency towards formal stiffness simply vanishes. The highly developmental third movement that does duty for the scherzo, also sports an unusually wide range of mood, with Oramo’s attention to accent and phrasing paying big dividends. If you have ever had doubts about this symphony, this performance may well erase them.

The “Espansiva” also packs quite a wallop. Its high octane opening gestures enlivens the entire movement, nowhere more so than in the grand waltz at the heart of the development section. The pastoral second movement is magnificent: the string playing has tremendous intensity, and there’s also an unusually bold contribution from the brass when they finally have the opening tune. Soloists Anu Komsi and Karl-Magnus Fredriksson aren’t highlighted unduly. Their wordless vocalize merges with, and emerges from, the surrounding texture with a naturalness that’s memorably poetic. In the last two movements, once again Oramo’s punchy accents and rhythmic drive create powerfully satisfying and idiomatic results.

BIS’ engineers have, as expected, achieved tactile, glowing sonics, placing the orchestra in a warm and open acoustic space and capturing every textural detail with just balances and palpable presence. It’s a good time to be a Nielsen fan.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

"With his invigorating, revelatory Sibelius cycle behind him, Osmo Vänskä turns now to that other great Nordic composer, Carl Nielsen, and tackles his series of six symphonies for BIS, this time with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He loses no time getting into his stride with a muscular yet lyrical first movement to No. 1, aptly characterising its unusual marking Allegro orgoglioso' (the latter word means 'proudly'). The second movement, too, begins with ravishing intimacy but builds to a powerful climax." -- Barry Millington, BBC Music Magazine [reviewing Symphonies 1 & 6, also available as Bis 1079]

"...There is exhilaration, warmth and a kind of optimism through gritted teeth in the closing pages of the Fifth Symphony, but they only just counterbalance the violence, desperation and general unease. The ‘Melancholic’ slow movement of No. 2 is as dark as I can remember, and there are even premonitory hints of it in the preceding ‘Phlegmatic’ movement – to say nothing of the unsettling reminder just before the end of the ‘Sanguine’ finale. But it’s the Fifth that makes the more powerful impression – as it should. Listening to Vänskä’s performance one is continually reminded that it was written in the aftermath of the First World War. It’s as though Nielsen were asking how one could continue to be positive in the face of such revelations of ‘senseless hate’. The result is a performance that grips as a musical structure, an emotional journey and a philosophical statement... [T]here is simply no other version of No. 5 on disc that’s as convincing and compelling as a whole statement. ...And No. 2 can hold its own even against the excellent Blomstedt recording on Decca – superbly recorded, and with more sensuous charm, but perhaps a little too cosy in comparison. There’s nothing comfortable about this Nielsen." -- Stephen Johnson, BBC Music Magazine [reviewing Symphonies 2 & 5, Bis 1289]

"How do you know that a new recording really has what it takes? For a critic the best answer is probably when he finds himself sneaking time out of his reviewing schedule to listen to it again – and again. Which is what has been happening for me with Osmo Vänskä’s Nielsen Fourth. It isn’t just that it’s powerfully conceived and compelling from first to last (and excellently recorded); the further the performance progresses, the more urgent and moving becomes that sense of what Nielsen called ‘yearning for life, for life’s essence’... [T]he sense of heroic, furious determination grows towards the finale, and is vindicated at the close as the great first movement melody re-emerges through fusillades of hostile timpani (in tune, for a change)... Vänskä’s account of the Third Symphony is almost as convincing. The first movement has terrific energy, and the finale benefits from Vänskä’s rugged determination. But impressive as the slow movement is, I miss the sense of awe, spaciousness and ultimate rapture in Herbert Blomstedt’s version – still my top recommendation. It’s a close-run thing, though, and Vänskä does have a particularly convincing view of the symphony as a whole statement. It’s the Fourth, though, that makes this disc a must-have." -- Stephen Johnson, BBC Music Magazine [reviewing Symphonies 3 & 4, Bis 1209]

Carl Nielsen has sometimes been described as the most underrated composer of the 20th century, but most critics would certainly agree that his Six Symphonies, composed between 1891 and 1925, belong to the great classics of their period. Osmo Vänskä's cycle of the works with the BBC Scottish SO was recorded after his landmark series of the symphonies of Sibelius and before his highly acclaimed cycle of those by Beethoven. Originally released on three separate discs, these accounts of the Danish master's works were received with great interest by the reviewers, with the performance of the Fourth being described as 'of great character and fire' in International Record Review, the recording of Symphony No.5 called 'a first choice, full of intensity' in BBC Music Magazine, and the Sixth accorded reference status in Répertoire. For this boxed set edition, three shorter orchestral works have been included, namely the concert overtures Helios and Saga-Dream, and the 'pastoral scene' Pan and Syrinx. In these previously unreleased recordings, Vänskä conducts the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which he led for twenty years and with which he has enjoyed such notable successes in music by Sibelius, Kalevi Aho and Rautavaara.

One of today’s foremost exponents of his instrument, Jakob Lindberg arrived at the lute by way of the guitar and played both for several years. When he decided to devote himself exclusively to the historic lute repertoire it was with some regret that he gave up his first love. During his last year with the modern guitar Lindberg was working on Benjamin Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland, one of the seminal guitar works of the 20th century. Much later, when he learned that Britten had originally had in mind to compose a piece for the lute, he started to experiment playing sections of Nocturnal on his Renaissance lute, and soon decided to make a transcription of the complete work. Nocturnal is based on Dowland’s four-part song Come, Heavy Sleep, and inspired by this, Jakob Lindberg has placed it as the center piece of a recital with mostly Elizabethan pieces, many of which also evoke aspects of the night. Dowland himself is represented by a selection of six lute solos, while the opening section consists of five pieces by Dowland’s older colleague Anthony Holborne. The closing track is by Holborne’s contemporary, John Johnson, and bids the listener Good Night and Good Rest.

Martin Fröst displays versatility and staggering virtuosity: eventful Anders Hillborg, assertive Holmboe, atmospheric Karin Rehnqvist and jolly Crusell.

– BBC Music Magazine

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Testifying to the multi-facetted talent of Martin Fröst as well as to the different responses that the clarinet has awakened in composers over the years, the present compilation brings together four concertante works in recordings that have all been previously released on separate discs. The opening work, Fröst’s fellow-Swede Anders Hillborg’s ‘Peacock Tales’, is the longest of the four, as well as being something of a calling card for Fröst. It was composed for him in 1998, and on his initiative it incorporates choreographical elements and lighting effects when performed in concert. Hillborg has since made several versions of the work, and Martin Fröst has performed it numerous times worldwide in its different incarnations. The disc Dances to a Black Pipe (BIS-1863) includes a shorter chamber version for clarinet, piano and strings, but the present recording is of the original version, with large symphony orchestra. If Peacock Tales focuses on the soloist, the opposite might be said of the Danish composer Vagn Holmboe’s Concerto No.3 from 1942. The work is one in a series of 13 concertos for one or more solo instruments and small orchestra, and it would seem that the composer, by not mentioning the solo instrument in the titles of these works, wished to signal a particular concern in regards to the relationship between soloist and orchestra. Writing about her On a Distant Shore, subtitled ‘poem for clarinet and chamber orchestra’, the Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist discusses the same problem more directly: ‘How does one arrive at a relationship between soloist and orchestra which is interesting and musically rewarding for everyone: soloist, orchestra and audience?’ Such concerns were probably of less concern to Finnish-Swedish composer and clarinet virtuoso Bernhard Crusell. Active during the beginning of the 19th century, Crusell is today mainly known for his clarinet concertos and clarinet quartets, but here Martin Fröst’s clarinet jauntily guides us through one of his earliest works: Introduction, Theme and Variations on a Swedish Air – the air in question being a drinking song popular at the time.

Only 20 years old, Johan Dalene has already been hailed as ‘a musician of special sensibilities’ (Gramophone) in possession of ‘a rare fire’ (Diapason), and his début disc, with the concertos of Tchaikovsky and Barber, was described as ‘one of the finest violin débuts of the last decade’ in the BBC Music Magazine. For his second album, the Swedish violinist has chosen repertoire closer to home, with works by six Nordic composers. This is music that lies equally well under the hands of his partner, the Norwegian pianist Christian Ihle Hadland, and together the two offer a program full of contrasts, and yet with a certain consistent sensibility. Nordic Rhapsody is bookended by two Norwegian composers, Christian Sinding and Edvard Grieg. What is interesting is that even though Sinding’s Suite ‘in the old style’ was composed some 25 years after Grieg’s Sonata No. 1, it is the latter work that is most forward-looking. Here the composer introd­uces elements of his national style, which in turn would contribute to the development of ‘a Nordic style’. Following on the heels of Sinding is a Swedish-Finnish-Danish trio with personal ties – Wilhelm Stenhammar was a close friend of both Sibelius and Nielsen, whose music inspired him to free himself from Central European influences. His Romances and the three miniatures by Sibelius were composed during the 1910s, while Nielsen’s Romance in D major is a youthful work offering Dalene – winner of the 2019 Nielsen Competition – the opportunity to send a greeting to the composer. Last but not least among these composers, Einojuhani Rautavaara represents a great leap in time. His music is often described as synonymous with a contemporary ‘Nordic style’, however, and the transition from Notturno e danza (1993) to Grieg’s Sonata is as smooth as the ice on a Finnish lake in winter.

REVIEWS:

Dalene’s playing possesses such palpable maturity, intelligence and composure that even a (dare I say it) hoary staple of the violin repertoire such as Sinding’s Suite in A minor sounds positively newly minted.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice, May 2021)

Most of the time Dalene is beauty incarnate and in perfect step with his composers’ various voices. He’s also blessed with a superbly understanding piano partner, Christian Ihle Hadland, who proves especially magical in the Grieg Sonata, poetically tapering phrases and effortlessly navigating changing dynamics.

– BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

‘The fantastic thing about art and music is that one can pose questions and conjure up visions at the same time.’ The words are those of the Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, who does exactly that in Emerging from Currents and Waves. A large-scale work for orchestra, clarinet soloist, conductor and live electronics, Emerging… is a collaboration between Nordin, Martin Fröst and Esa-Pekka Salonen. All three are interested in how new technology can – and will – influence art and artistic expression, and in exploring the intersection of mankind, music and technology. Emerging from Currents and Waves is in three parts, with the clarinet concerto "Emerging" at its center. In the work the electronic and the acoustic world meet on an equal footing. The sound of the live orchestra is recorded in real time, sampled, treated and played back, in processes that are controlled by both soloist and conductor with the help of motion sensors. The technology used for this is Gestrument (from ‘gesture’ and ‘instrument’), originally invented by Nordin as a tool for composition, but which here is used rather as an instrument.

The present recording was made at the first performance of the work, in Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen during the 2018 Baltic Sea Festival. In concert a visual element was added as images generated by the electronic music-making were projected onto several layers of transparent fabrics forming a specially designed sculpture that hovered above the orchestra.

Celebrating his 80th birthday in 2012, Per Nørgård is undoubtedly one of the most important Danish composers since Nielsen. A prolific composer in many genres, he has also been influential in his rôle as a teacher of composition, and through his extensive writings on music from both technical and philosophical viewpoints. This disc, recorded in 2010 in the presence of the composer, brings together his two violin concertos as well as the orchestral work Spaces of Time. While wholly characteristic of Nørgård’s personal musical language, each work exemplifies particular aspects that have preoccupied the composer during the past 25 years. In Spaces of Time one aim was to create a continuous development from the musical material, in spite of it being organized in separate and contrasting temporal spaces. Helle Nacht (‘bright night’) is, among other things, an experiment in focal depth – the music has several transparent layers, and at each hearing the listener will be able to experience the work differently, depending on which layer is perceived as foreground or background. The aimed-for transparency of the music is even more pronounced in the version for chamber orchestra, created especially for the soloist on the present recording. Borderlines, the title of the closing work, alludes to the position of the soloist, who must take into account two different tonalities in the orchestral accompaniment. One is represented by the Western ‘well- tempered’ scale, while the other features micro-tones generated as harmonics on the lower string instruments, and is, in Nørgård’s own words, ‘as foreign to the ear as is the dark side of the moon to the eye’. Supported here by the fine Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and conductor Rolf Gupta, the Norwegian violinist Peter Herresthal has previously appeared on two BIS releases, each documenting his close collaboration with a living composer: Olav Anton Thommessen and Arne Nordheim, respectively. Both discs were acclaimed by the reviewers, with the critic in the French magazine Répertoire extolling ‘the astounding achievement of Peter Herresthal: precise, virtuosic, sensitive and completely committed on the emotional level.’

Throughout history, the open landscapes and mythical cultures of the Nordic countries have triggered the imagination of artists. Finnish horn player Markus Maskuniitty and pianist Martin Sturfalt perform works which, although separated in time by more than a century, all draw their inspiration from from these areas of interest. The compositions gathered here approach these Nordic themes from different angles, blending traditional folk influences with contemporary classical techniques whilst exploring the horn's lyrical and dramatic capabilities and it's rich sound palette. Recent compositions by Piers Hellawell, Tryggvi M. Baldvinsson, Albert Schnelzer and Benjamin Staern are mixed with older works by Carl Nielsen, Hugo Alfven and Julius Rontgen, including the latter's Aus Jotunheim, a suite characterized by an irresistible Norwegian flavour throughout it's five movements, quoting everything from cattle calls to lullabies with plenty of rustic folk dancing in between. This imaginative program designed by Maskuniity and Sturfalt puts a spotlight on the unique character of the Nordic musical identity.

Conceived as homage from the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir to the man who founded it in 1950 and remained its leader for 40 years, Knut Nystedt who passed away in December 2014, at the age of 99. Alongside the two Bach motets here featuring the choir along with Ensemble Allegria and Maria Angelika Carlsen on violin solo, among Nystedt’s repertoire with the choir, the collection also prominently features four works of Nystedt’s, including O Crux (1977) which Nystedt regarded as one of his main works. The choir provides an ineffable epitaph to Nystedt’s legacy with this release, together with Grete Pedersen, Nystedt's successor as artistic leader of the choir. Recorded in Super Audio.

Classical Music

Four of the six symphonies by the Swedish composer Gösta Nystroem (1890-1966) have already been released by BIS in performances by Malmö Symphony Orchestra. The two discs were variously described in American Record Guide as music 'of very high quality, beautifully judged, scored with an expert hand, with a spontaneous, yet controlled flow' and on the website MusicWeb International as 'important and highly individual works superbly performed and recorded'. The cycle is completed with the present CD, on which the German conductor Christoph König makes his first appearance on BIS. The opening work on the disc is Nystroem's first symphony, Sinfonia breve, which he composed just before his return to Sweden after having spent the 1920's in Paris. With a duration of close to 20 minutes, the work is in one movement with a symmetrical arc-shape, features which also characterize the third, and perhaps best-known of Nystroem's symphonies, Sinfonia del mare. Dedicated to 'all the sailors upon the seven seas' the latter work expresses Nystroem's lifelong fascination with the sea and the coast. This fascination he shared with the Swedish poet Ebba Lindqvist, whose poem Det Enda ('The One Thing') he incorporated in the central section of the symphony. The soloist on the present recording is the internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman.

REVIEWS:
Fanfare (5-6/98, p.173) - "The Swede Gösta Nystroem (1890-1966) is one of those undemonstrative composers whose quiet sobriety might lead the inattentive to pass him by unwittingly. But in his understated way Nystroem is a master, and BIS's ongoing series of recordings with Paavo Järvi in Malmö is something that deserves enthusiastic support..."
BBC Music (3/98, p.59) - Performance: 4 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5) - "...the Malmö Symphony Orchestra reveals its greatest strength in a richness of string tone....Paavo Järvi keep[s] tight control on the music's sometimes diffuse dramatic flow..."

This is BIS's third installment of orchestral music by Gösta Nystroem, and I have to confess that it got lost in the shuffle when it first arrived for review. That was my mistake. Nystroem was a splendid composer, and the previous two releases both were excellent, as is this one. These two symphonies have much in common musically, including Nystroem's habit of beginning a movement in silence, with a slowly building threnody scored principally for high strings, followed by quicker episodes. If this sounds formulaic, it's not. First of all, Nystroem was extremely good at this sort of thing, and second, the two works are quite different in terms of structure. The Fourth Symphony has three movements and is based on incidental music to Shakespeare's The Tempest, while the Sixth and last symphony follows an original two-movement plan, each of its parts containing highly contrasting material in varying tempos.

Nystroem's orchestration also is very colorful and effective. His evocative use of high strings to open many of his individual movements should not blind us to the fact that he was very much a composer for the whole orchestra. This means full sonorities, plentiful use of winds, brass, and percussion, and beautifully judged, fluid textures. Although there are plenty of good tunes, Nystroem was not a melodist in the conventional sense. But his basic sonorities always fall gratefully on the ear, and his driving rhythms in quicker music produce a great deal of physical excitement. In short, this is really good, solid, characterful symphonic writing, and the performances give the full measure of each work. The only possible missing ingredient might be a bit more assertiveness from the brass at the big climaxes, but I can't imagine anyone being dissatisfied with either the interpretations or the vivid sound.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This premiere release of the two remaining unrecorded symphonies of the half-dozen by the singular Swede Gösta Nyström (1890–1966) represents for this writer the fulfillment of a long-cherished wish list.

Together with Hilding Rosenberg (1892–1985) and Allan Pettersson (1911–1980), Nystroem stands at the pinnacle of Swedish music during the 20th century. His sui generis expressionistic voice (which sounds like no other) seems to embody the brooding but aloof Swedish soul in sound. Spiritually speaking, his only significant parallel, perhaps because of his dozen years of study and experience in Paris, could be that of the Swiss Arthur Honegger. Although Nystroem was an occasional painter—as well as a music critic—and thus quite concerned with questions of orchestral color, there is nothing especially pictorial about his music.

His intensely direct and dramatic idiom—a very personal blend of post-Impressionism and post-Romantic elements—gave rise to some of the most emotionally raw and vulnerable-sounding music of the modern period. Beginning in 1931 with the Sinfonia breve, which was followed shortly by the Sinfonia espressiva for string orchestra, in the late 1940s Nystroem wrote the sublime Sinfonia del mare (“Sea Symphony”), probably his masterpiece in the form; then in 1952 this Fourth Symphony, subtitled “Sinfonia Shakespeariana” followed by the Sinfonia seria in 1963, and finally by the posthumously premiered sixth and last, “Sinfonia tramontana” in 1966. (There is also an unnumbered Sinfonia concertante for cello and orchestra from the 1940s.) All six vary in length from 20 to 30 minutes.

Even though he utilizes a very distinctive blend of modal-diatonic and intermittently very chromatized dissonance—in fact, some of his themes are close to atonal but still lyrically graspable—Nyström’s language is never convoluted or forbidding. He always addresses the listener very forthrightly on a level of almost painfully naked subjectivity. The guiding principal of his work is one of extreme contrast or energetic conflict: in just a single measure or two, he can veer from a threatening tone of violent relentlessness to a piercingly short-lived moment of tenderness, but his basic background is one of unrelieved lugubriousness. He often writes in large instrumental blocks, pitting strings as a group against winds or brasses, with the timpani always closely on call. Formally, the symphonies vary from the single-movement Sinfonia breve to the five interrelated sections of the Sinfonia del mare, but the thematic materials are often derived from a single generating motivic source.

The Fourth Symphony, though subtitled “Shakespeariana,” does not quote from any of the rather functional though appealing incidental scores he wrote for The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice. The Shakespeare reference is probably meant to evoke a sense of tragic humanity that pervades the three movements. As in most of the symphonies, the outer Allegro movement begins as a barely audible Lento before bursting out into full force; at the center, it suddenly drops into an unexpected, secluded oasis of sad serenity before plunging back into its initial turbulence. By the same token, the midpoints of many of his slow movements erupt into quick passages of savage agitation, even though the same or similar themes are present in both modalities.

The Sixth or “Tramontana” Symphony (the subtitle carries an implication of a visionary statement coming from beyond the range of everyday life) is a kind of transcendental diptych, with two panels of almost equal length following the same characteristic expressive arc of Lento–Allegro–Lento (or Andante). In the symphony’s concluding measures, Nystroem attempts a grand resolution, but to these ears the sorrowful reverberations win out.

B. Tommy Andersson offers splendidly charged and maintained readings of these almost schizoid works; he is always careful not to let Nyström’s multiple lines and towering climaxes get out of hand. Typically, the dynamic spectrum of BIS’s engineering is so unusually wide that only the best reproduction equipment will be able to do justice to its shattering power. In short, a major addition to the 20th century Scandinavian symphonic discography.

Paul A. Snook, FANFARE

Having celebrated his 90th birthday in 2022, Per Nørgård is undoubtedly one of the most important Danish composers since Nielsen. His important production that covers all genres is a highly personal travel document based on his endless incursions through the sonic labyrinths of this world.

Based on material from Nørgård’s viola concerto from 1986, Three Nocturnal Movements for violin, cello and orchestra came about on the initiative of the violinist Peter Herresthal and the cellist Jakob Kullberg, two of his long-term collaborators. The work was creatively developed for two soloists by Kullberg, who decided on the form of the movement after making a selection of musical fragments described as ‘nocturnal’.

Dedicated to the conductor John Storgårds, Symphony No. 8 appears bright, transparent while its atmosphere is somewhat mysterious and filled with tension. This symphony, his most recent work in this genre, can be compared to latter works from other Nordic composers like Sibelius and Nielsen. Finally, Lysning, a short piece for string orchestra, has been described by Nørgård as a ‘glade’ and is made of an alternance of darker and brighter variations of the same musical ideas heard in different instrumental colourings and nuances.

Released in 2016 - the 150th anniversary of the birth of Erik Satie - the first volume of the series was warmly greeted by reviewers worldwide, who paised the clarity of Noriko Ogawa's interpretations as well as teh crystalline sound of her chosen instrument, an Erard grand piano from 1890. Like its predecessor, this second instalment takes in music from different phases of the composer's career, including the very early Three Sarabandes from 1887. A few years later Satie became involved with an esoteric society called ''The Catholic Rosy Cross of the Temple and the Grail'' for which he composed works such as the Sonneries de la Rose+Crois. Throughout his life, Satie identified strongly with children and famously said of himself that he ''came into the world very young, in an age that was very old''. In 1913, during what is often termed his ''humorous'' period he composed the four sets of children's pieces included on this album. Hailing from the same period are the two sets of ''Flabby preludes for a dog'' as well as the suite Sports et divertissements. Often regarded as one of the finest examples of Satie's art, this consists of a prelude and 20 musical snapshots depicting different sports and leisure activities, including golf, fishing and dancing. The suite was first published as a collector's album, accompanied by illustrations by Charles Martin and Satie's own prose poetry and calligraphy.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music