Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra & Christian Lindberg - Pettersson: Symphony No. 14 (2017)

It was in the fifties that the Swedish composer Allan Petterson (1911-1980) studied with René Leibowitz, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud in Paris, after which he returned to Sweden where he would carve a Solid reputation as a major figure in the country's music scene. Petterson, however, did not start very well: a blacksmith and an alcoholic father, the beginnings in life of banging on iron rods before the vocation (and a more understanding mother) Study violin and viola at the Conservatory. From there he was able to gain his existence as a performer at the Stockholm Orchestra, but the call for composition was too strong, hence his Parisian explorations. His Fourteenth Symphony, written in 1978, demonstrates his enormous talents as a polyphonist, an orchestrator as well as a blacksmith (not to be remade!) Ample constructions of a powerful originality. It is extremely bitter lyricism, which he shares with Shostakovich (although the languages ​​of the two contemporary musicians differ: it would be more accurate to draw possible parallels with Charles Ives), moments of intense violence alternating with a Tenderness desolate, instants of flash of joy, here is a symphony - in a movement, but what a monument - which undoubtedly must be discovered throughout several listenings to discover the many, many details quite genial. The work was not created until 1981, a year after the composer's disappearance; A Swedish chronicler remarked that "work after work, he struggled his way through his personal difficulties; All the nightmares that tapped him, he projected them into his music; Then he wrote a symphony, the Fourteenth, of great juvenility, which throws everything overboard except pure music and magnificent symphonic construction.

TRACKLIST

01. Symphony No. 14: Dotted Quarter Note = 89
02. Symphony No. 14: Quarter Note = 48 (Fig. 17)
03. Symphony No. 14: Half Note = 72 (3 Bars After Fig. 27)
04. Symphony No. 14: Quarter Note = C. 84 (2 Bars Before Fig. 45)
05. Symphony No. 14: Half Note = 64 (2 Bars After Fig. 87)
06. Symphony No. 14: Half Note = 48 (Fig. 115, Final Quaver)
07. Symphony No. 14: Half Note = 72 (4 Bars Before Fig. 125)
08. Symphony No. 14: Half Note = 64 (3 Bars After Fig. 126)
09. Symphony No. 14: Half Note = 48 (Fig. 138)