Somewhat incredibly, for a man crippled by rheumatoid arthritis and essentially confined to his apartment (four floors above ground level without an elevator), Allan Pettersson managed to begin and complete his next two symphonies within a single year.
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphony No. 13, Violin Concerto No. 2, 1976-77
by 5:4Symphony No. 13 (1976) In the first part of this Lent Series, i remarked on the sorry fact that most of the admittedly sparse commentary on Pettersson’s music has invariably adopted the stance that it is all bleak, tragic and full of despair. Several of the preceding works i’ve explored …
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphony No. 12, Vox Humana, 1973-74
by 5:4Symphony No. 12 “De döda på torget” (1973-1974) When Allan Pettersson began work on his Twelfth Symphony, it had been nearly 30 years since he had set text to music (in the 24 Barfotasånger, completed in 1945). He turned to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, selecting nine poems that would …
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 10-11, Symfonisk sats, 1971-73
by 5:4Symphony No. 10 (1971-1972) Not since Harrison Birtwistle’s Exody have i had so much trepidation writing about an orchestral piece. Pettersson’s Symphony No. 10 picks up the baton from No. 9 and doesn’t just run with it, but positively sprints for a full 25 minutes. That in itself makes the …
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In recent years the Swiss music festival Forum Wallis has broken up its elements into three parts – instrumental, electronic and folk – taking place separately, in different parts of the Valais region. As last year, i just attended the instrumental performances, which took place over two days in Schloss …
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 8-9, 1968-70
by 5:4Symphony No. 8 (1968-1969) Allan Pettersson’s previous two symphonies, though structured as single movements, both featured what amounts to two distinct sections. Symphony No. 8 is the same, though here Pettersson explicitly divides the work into two movements. This is an interesting decision, as it can easily be argued that, …
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 6-7, 1963-67
by 5:4Symphony No. 6 (1963-1966) i said previously that Symphony No. 5 upped the ante, so perhaps it seems like hyperbole to say that in Symphony No. 6 Pettersson does it again, but there really is no other way of perceiving this vast 60-minute, single span behemoth. By this point in …
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 4-5, 1958-62
by 5:4Symphony No. 4 (1958-1959) By now, the paradigm is well-established: Pettersson’s music is one of disruptive struggle, where contrasting, sometimes contradictory, musical ideas jostle and collide in a cycle of seemingly unstoppable volatility. In his previous work, the Concerto No. 3 for String Orchestra, Pettersson had allowed himself a greater …
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Today’s the start of the annual Forum Wallis festival, so i’m away in the Swiss Alps for a couple of days to explore all that’s happening. Words to follow when i get back next week; meanwhile, the Lent Series will continue while i’m away.
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 for String Orchestra, 1956-57
by 5:4Following on from his first three symphonies, in the mid-1950s Allan Pettersson’s compositional interest returned to strings, writing two more concertos, one small, one large.
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphonies Nos. 1-3, 1951-55
by 5:4Having spent a little over a decade exploring chamber and vocal music, from 1951 onward the trajectory of Allan Pettersson’s compositional journey changed, and changed permanently. In a similar way to Mahler, as soon as Pettersson began work on his first symphony, in 1951, it evidently became clear to him …
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: First major works, 1949-51
by 5:4Concerto No. 1 for Violin and String Quartet (1949) Arriving at Allan Pettersson’s first violin concerto comes as something of a shock. On the one hand, it continues the composer’s focus on chamber music that dates back to his earliest pieces, as well as his exploration of counterpoint, which was …
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In the second part of this year’s Lent Series, focusing on the recently released BIS Complete Edition of Allan Petterson’s music, i’m continuing to explore the earliest compositions, which include his first large-scale work.
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About a year-and-a-half ago, in the summer of 2022, i emailed the Swedish label BIS to ask whether they might at some point box up all of their individual releases of Allan Pettersson‘s symphonies. (At the time i was immersed in the box set released by CPO, featuring all of …
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On this occasion it’s not one but multiple killings that i’m commemorating. In 2005 i composed a number of short hymns and motets, most of which were planned to be incorporated into a very much larger work that i began around the same time (a darling that will itself, one …
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i’m concluding my January exploration of interesting free music with Heitsi-Eibib-Rec by Spanish sound artist Francisco López. Usually, López prefers to leave his works untitled, so Heitsi-Eibib-Rec is therefore somewhat unusual. Though the work doesn’t have an accompanying note – except to say it uses “original environmental sound matter recorded …
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The next freely available release i want to explore is Devotion, by US musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. It’s a 20-minute fantastical work that lives up to its title by suggesting varying forms of ecstatic focus.
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A group that i’ve come back to time and time again over the years is Natural Snow Buildings. A duo comprising French musicians Mehdi Ameziane and Solange Gularte, they mingle elements of folk, ambient and psychedelia. The result is a heady mixture that consistently falls somewhere between song, trance and …
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Today’s piece of freely available music is by British ambient musician Daniel W J Mackenzie, aka (via some partial name reversing) Ekca Liena. November in Flight was originally released over a decade-and-a-half ago, on a bonus CD included in Mackenzie’s 2011 album Slow Music For Rapid Eye Movement. It’s a …
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Heteromania is a collaboration between sound artist Conure (aka Mark Wilson) and cyberpunk poet Kenji Siratori, originally created around the start of 2007, but subsequently unreleased, so Wilson made it available online in 2011. While i’m only familiar with a relatively small amount of the extensive Conure back catalogue, i’ve …