Jan Sibelius and Carl Nielsen put Scandinavian music on the world map. These two titans, however, so overshadowed their contemporaries and followers that one must wonder that they left in their wake. Is there life after Sibelius and Nielsen? The answer is a resounding yes. There has been a musical renaissance in Scandinavia certainly every bit as vigorous and significant as the one in England that followed Edward Elgar's magnificent achievements. Thanks to a common tongue and heritage, British composers of the twentieth century such as Frank Bridge, Benjamin Britten, Williams, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Micheal Tippett are fairly well known in the United States. But what about their Scandinavian confreres? I would be surprised at the reader who could recognize any of the two dozen or so finest Scandinavian composers whom I list by country:
Sweden: Wilhelm Peterson Berger (1867-1942), Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927), Hugo Alfven (1872-1960), Ture Rangstom (1884-1947), Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974), Gosta Nystroem (1890-1985), Lars-Erik Larsson (1908-1986), Erland von Koch (1910-), Allan Petterson (1911-80), Torbjorn Iwan Lundquist (120 -), Vagn Holmboe (1909-), Rued Langgaard (1893-1952), Niels Viggo Bentzon (1919-); Finland: Leevi Madetoja (1887-1947), Aarre Merikanto (1893-1958), Uno Klami (1900-61), Einar Anglund (1916-), Joonas Kokkonen (1921 - ), Aulis Sallinen (1935- ).
This list is hardly inclusive and does not even mention the more promising of the younger generation, such as Halvor Haug (b. 1952) from Norway and Kalevi Aho (b. 1949) from Finland.
This ignorance is stranger still when one realizes that almost all of these composers are highly lyrical and basically tonal in their compositions. Perhaps tonality is prevalent in their works because, like the British, The Scandinavians were virtually isolated by geography from the German virus of dodecaphony (twelve-tone music). As in Great Britain, dodecaphony came late and left early. Though it has its "coterie of twelve-notery" (Robert Simpson's phrase) in each country, it never dominated the musical scene - certainly not for half a century - as it did on the continent and in the United States. Dodecaphony never stamped out the strong surge of romantic nationalism and nature mysticism in Scandinavia. As a happy result, there is an abundance of first-rate Scandinavian symphonic and chamber music waiting to be discovered by those lovers of melody and romance who might have thought that they were born in the wrong century.
Now this unknown music is being made available in a flood of compact disc releases from such companies as Finlandia, Caprice, Swedish Society Discofil, Big Ben, DIS, and Aurora. The limited space of this survey only allows for mention of some of the releases of key composers and items of special interest.
For the wary, a survey disc may be the best place to start. BIS, a widely available Swedish label, has issued a lovely CD entitled A Swedish Pastorale (CD 165), which contains two of Lars-Erik Larsson's most popular suites, The Winter's Tale and Pastoral Suite, Op. 19, and Kurt Atterberg's Suite No. 3 for Violin, Viola and String Orchestra (1917). The Larsson pieces are delectable Sibelian nature paintings, and the Atterberg is subdued and moving. These three meltingly lovely works are joined by some pleasant Baroque noodlings of John Helmich Roman (1694-1758), considered the father of Swedish music, and three morceaux by Hugo Alfven, Hilding
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