Kallstenius: Symphonic Works
Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra/Frank Beerman
CPO 777 361
Total Time:  56:08
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

CPO explores a great deal of Swedish musical literature and this new release, recorded back in 2007, is now seeing the light of day.  The music focuses on the work of Edvin Kallstenius (1881-1967), an important figure in Swedish music for his work with the Swedish Broadcasting corporation and Society of Swedish Composers.  His musical studies began in that fertile period at the start of the 20^th century though his studies in Leipzig, the place many composers headed throughout the 19^th century, proved to be less satisfactory.  His exposure to the new music of Debussy, Reger, and Schreker, would have important impacts on the young composer who found himself at the threshold of expressionism, further exemplified by the work of Richard Strauss he heard at the time.  His work thus eventually fell into that catch-all “modernist” category.  Both Nielsen and Sibelius greatly admired his work.

Kallstenius would compose five symphonies and his first appeared in 1926, rather late in his career.  The work was premiered two years later amidst a pops-like concert insuring the modernist work would be poorly received amidst the bane of most modern composers, the poorly-performed and rehearsed resulting first performance.  In 1941, Kallstenius revised the work, and it is this version recorded here.  The opening movement certainly has its expressionist and modern complexities on display from the opening dramatic bars.  Dark colors and non-traditional harmony swirl around as the piece starts with a second thematic idea launched subtly by horns and winds.  It seems to come in small segments rather than in a more traditional lyrical long line in an often fascinating atmospheric beginning to this three-movement work.  There are certainly more traditional lyric and harmonic moments that are reminiscent of Sibelius’ slow revealing of motives, though the language is a bit more dissonant here.  These serve like flashes of light and comfort, especially in the final bars.  The ternary central movement is a slow movement wrapped around a scherzo.  The opening is a pizzicato slow bass idea with rising string idea with a more pastorale scherzo to follow.  Even in the midst of the modern harmony, Kallestenius’ melodic ideas tend to shy away from angular lines, though things may jump to higher pitch levels, and he uses this to add tension and more emotional thrust to the music.  The final movement starts with a flurry of activity and some arrival points that are very parallel to Sibelius’s symphonic writing.  Today, the piece is certainly something to explore with interesting musical ideas and orchestral writing that does want one to further explore the composer’s later symphonies as it signals an interesting direction in Nordic symphonic writing.

The central work on the release is the second of four Sinfoniettas by the composer.  Composed as World War II was drawing to a close, it is now tempered modernist work typical of many of the 1920s modernist’s maturing in the 1940s.  The music here is slightly more accessible harmonically with lyrical melodic ideas and playful orchestral writing.  It is still a very modern work and the opening movement has an almost folk-like quality to the music and rhythms.  The central movement is a beautiful highlight for strings (reminiscent of Wiren, but with slightly more intriguing harmonic ideas).  The final movement has playful interaction and marches away in fits and starts.  The arrival points in Kallstenius’ music are always the most fascinating delights as they are certainly very stylistic, but recall other 20^th Century masters of Northern Europe.

The opening of Musica sinfonica, completed in 1953, and rescored for smaller orchestra (used in this recording, feels like an extension of the preceding sinfonietta.  The three movement work is fully in the period of abstract mid-century music with more freedom for formal structures.  The opening movement features a sort of variation on a rhythmic idea that gets tossed about the orchestra.  The central movement has a more austere religious atmosphere and the finale recalls folk music in a more episodic concluding movement.

The music of Kallstenius feels very unjustly neglected.  Hopefully a wider audience through recordings such as this can draw some attention to this otherwise forgotten Swedish composer.  His musical ideas are sound, the orchestration accomplished and often drawing out unique colors and sounds.  Melodic ideas are approached at a micro level as an extension of Beethoven-like motive exploration.  The harmonic language will seem fairly tame to those who appreciate modernist styles, but there is a great deal to enjoy in this music.  When Kallstenius starts moving through his melodic ideas they often end up in very traditional harmonic areas which help sweeten this engaging music.

The Helsingborg players provide committed performances to these rarely heard works and the ensemble is on great display in CPO’s stunning recording.  Easily recommendable to fans of Northern European music, especially if one appreciates the later work of Sibelius and Nielsen.  It is a great set of pieces to compare to the more traditional works of Alfven.

Schuman: Symphony No. 8/Night Journey/ Ives-Variations on ‘America’
Seattle Symphony conducted by Gerard Schwarz
Naxos 8.559651
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Back in the 1990s, Delos enticed us all with the expectation of a complete cycle of William Schuman’s symphonies.  Gerard Schwarz’s work with the Seattle Symphony on a Hanson cycle in warm sound made the prospect of his Schuman approach quite interesting.  A release of the third and fifth was as far as they got until Naxos revived the project of which this is the crowning and final achievement of this five-disc cycle.  Schuman’s music wavers between astringency and accessibility and this disc allows for a bit of both sides of this great American composer.

The CD opens with an intense and near perfect performance of Schuman’s Symphony No. 8 from 1962.  Schuman eschews traditional orchestral melodic writing instead creating an almost overwhelming study in orchestration, texture, and tempo acceleration.  The piece has a distant cousin in the composer’s monumental fourth string quartet from 1950 whose elements are further explored and extended in this piece.  The first movement is a study in dissonance and very close harmony that opens with a slow pulse that Schwarz allows time to flow into the silence with amazing power.  As the movement builds in temporal intensity, the intervallic proportions begin to alter slightly and are almost pulled apart by the increased tempo.  The movement essentially segues into an arch-like central slow movement with a faster central section.  Here longer string lines ebb and flow in an angular idea that along the way is harmonized with extended chordal structures.  Once again the music tries very hard to push its way faster into the center but is reigned in to its breaking point.  Schwarz manages to create shape to Schuman’s seemingly disjointed lines here and the engineers have managed to capture the different instrumental groupings so that they can be easily heard in the overall texture.  The third and final movement moves at a “Presto” tempo but aurally the effect of static motion still occurs.  Skittish strings and brass alternate along with some truly fascinating pitched percussion work always referring back to those clashes of slow dissonance from the opening movement.  Dissonance seemed to take over the first movement, but here tempo rules insistently driving to the close with the orchestra seeming to want to veer out of control.  The winds get a chance to show off here for the first time winding their way around a small pitch level in fits and starts that gradually builds throughout the orchestra in a textural crescendo. 

There is but one other recording of this symphony made by Leonard Bernstein back closer to the works premiere.  The recording is available with Schuman’s 3^rd and 5^th symphonies and is worthwhile listening, but Schwarz’s new recording will be the one to beat if ever one decides to record this work again.  Both performances are quite similar in their timings with Schwarz getting the better of a warmer acoustic and improved digital sound.  Though playing to 32 minutes, the symphony is easily one of the composer’s finest pieces.

Bridging the gap between later-century symphonic writing and the post-Americana movement of the 1930s and 1940s is Night Journey.  Written for Martha Graham in 1947, the first of four ballets he would compose for her company, Night Journey is perhaps the most familiar and played.  The story takes the point of view of Jocasta, the lover and mother of Oedipus.  It is both a seminal piece of American Ballet and a defining piece of music in Schuman’s career that allows us to see the fruition of his style in this miniature orchestral form.  There are intriguing melodic ideas that spin out endlessly with an almost melancholic turn in the music.  The scoring is quite intimate and introspective.  Most fascinating for fans of other ballets commissioned by Graham is the overall shape the music takes.  Consider comparing this to the more familiar Americana stories scored by Copland and there is a general dramatic structure that begins to emerge.  Again, one is always amazed at the way Schuman can manipulate his orchestral textures so effortlessly.

There have been a few recordings of this work that come and go in the catalogue.  The most recent was a Koch release from 1991 that featured additional ballets by Menotti and Hindemith also written for Graham.  That version of Night Journey ran to nearly 30 minutes under the direction of Andrew Schenk.  Both appear to have chosen a 15-instrument version of the score which Schuman prepared in 1981 for smaller ensembles which removes extra repeats and bridges necessary for stage production. 

Finally, the disc closes with perhaps one of Schuman’s most popular arrangements from 1964, Ives’ “Variations on ‘America’.”  The piece was premiered at a New York Philharmonic Concert conducted by Andre Kostelanetz and had rarely flagged in popularity.  It makes for a delightful and ear-relaxing encore to a quite satisfying performance.  (This performance originally appeared on a Delos release of Schuman’s music with these same forces.)

No fan of American music will want to be without this quintessential series of music by one of our great composers of the 20^th century.