Concerto 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 a feature of the two immediately preceding works, Lamento and Fuga in E. Yet in spite of those aspects of continuity, Concerto No. 1 for Violin and String Quartet is a finely-honed exploration of contrapuntal energy filled to overflowing with vitality and drama. As in Fuga and Lamento, Baroque influences can be felt; the violin’s opening salvo seems like a folk-like fugue subject, but instead continues as an elaborate solo. Yet then it does become the start of a quasi-fugal opening when the quartet joins in, quickly abandoned in favour of an altogether more free-wheeling group behaviour. This typifies the first movement, all five players moving elastically together. Shortly before the end, the soloist seems to get stuck in a loop, something that Pettersson will return to in future works.
Its slow movement is nothing of the kind, but is instead tremulous and edgy, rhythmically strong. It has a similar blend of hot and cold to Pettersson’s previous works, nowhere more so than in a strange, hypnotic sequence late in the movement when it’s as if the world were covered in ice, Pettersson allowing time for this to play out. In the final movement there’s the fascinating impression of a seemingly genuine uncertainty. After powerful measured chords, the opening continues quizzically, with an ostensible lack of clear direction. One minute hectic, the next mysterious, then simple, now trudging, now a cadenza of sorts, before collapsing in a mess of weird plunks. What’s remarkable is that the behavioural and contrapuntal ambiguity ends up having a logic and dramatic sense that somehow makes it all cohere effortlessly. Passing through a weird out of tune melody, the concerto ends with beautiful delicacy.
Of the three available recordings, Ulf Hoelscher and the Mandelring Quartet is the least effective overall; it’s a lovely, sinewy performance, gnarly and spindly, but there’s insufficient contrasting heat to fully convey the breadth of Pettersson’s material. It’s hard to choose a preference between the other two. Yamei Yu and the Leipzig String Quartet are outstanding in their recording, on MDG Gold. The first movement is almost flamboyant, with pronounced contrasts, and Yu making the solos really punchy. The central Lento has wonderful intimacy and warmth, its counterpoint revealed for the convoluted tangle that it is, and a late sequence sounding akin to organum becomes absolutely mesmerising. Their performance also drops to staggeringly inaudible hushes, enhancing the drama further, and they manage to make the final movement feel like it’s arriving, eventually, somewhere concrete.
Equally marvellous – perhaps just a bit more so – is the performance in the Complete Edition, by Ulf Wallin with Sueye Park, Daniel Vlashi Lukaçi, German Tcakulov and Alexander Wollheim. It’s this group that best demonstrates that group elasticity, and in their hands the music’s relentless energy is not simply poured out but channelled and shaped, the recording capturing a fantastic amount of detail. The middle movement has the distinct sense of being a kind of laboured, askew folk music, its dancing playfulness making a strong connection back to Pettersson’s early chamber compositions, something taken even further in the final movement, where in that plunking weird section the folk elements sound positively grotesque. Like Yu and Leipzig, they don’t try to force “sense” onto the final movement’s narrative bewilderment, yet somehow its odd musical language never seems confused, but simply wonderfully capricious.
Concerto No. 1 for String Orchestra (1949-1950)
Pettersson continued to focus on strings in his next two works. Although Concerto No. 1 for String Orchestra lacks a soloist, the piece is characterised by a continual flexing between tutti and individual emphases, the latter of which continues the composer’s long-standing interest in chamber music. Where the violin concerto made pronounced counterpoint the vehicle for its energy, the present work sublimates this into a more generalised, and more individual, language driven by strong rhythmic momentum and abrupt dynamic shifts. Baroque models no longer make their presence felt. It has something of the sharp, slashing accentuation that Shostakovich often gave to his more robust string writing, but Pettersson is clearly in no way seeking to emulate. All three of the work’s movements, though distinct, feel like a part of the same ongoing narrative, in the process almost becoming an indivisible 20-minute continuity.
Considering its power, it’s surprising how some recordings don’t manage to adequately convey this. Unfortunately, one of these performances is the one in the Complete Edition, by the Nordic Chamber Orchestra conducted by Christian Lindberg. The concerto has an “in your face” quality that this recording avoids, as well as lacking the powerful muscularity captured in other recordings. This is partly due to Lindberg’s decision to focus primarily on the motivic aspects of the work (which are admittedly considerable, bordering on obsessive) to the expense of its drama, and, surprisingly for BIS, there are times when the textural details are unclear. Similarly problematic is the 2006 release by Musica Vitae under Petter Sundkvist. Though not exactly reverberant, the recording isn’t as crisp, with a strange muffling of high frequency brightness (essential in this work). It’s definitely a performance that gets better as it goes along – the middle movement is hugely intense, with a nicely threatening conclusion – but its periodically muddled focus prevents it from capturing the manic weight the work needs.
Best by far are the two earliest recordings of the piece. i spoke of the perception of a 20-minute continuity, and this perhaps explains why the recording by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stig Westerberg, originally released by Caprice in 1977, has the first two movements combined into one track. Either way, they beautifully capture Pettersson’s continual veering between chamber intimacy and grandiose tutti, embracing the madness of its more unhinged sequences, such as the end of the first movement, where huge knife-like slashes are accompanied by deep accents in the bass. The counterpoint flows like an unstoppable torrent, implicitly continuing even when the momentum, for a time, seems to have vanished. This has the effect of perfectly conveying the continual oscillation between rapidity and rumination. It’s an exhilarating performance that, recorded nearly half a century ago, shows no signs at all of its age.
By a whisker my preference is for the mid-90s recording by the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss conducted by Johannes Goritzki. That oscillation i mentioned is turned into parabolic accelerations and rallentandos here, accentuating further the push-pull of the music. The dynamic range is such that at first it seems as if Goritzki is encouraging exaggeration, but over time it becomes clear that this is simply symptomatic of the extremes in the score. The knife slashes are wincingly cutting, yet equally the orchestra allows real time for the more contemplative passages to linger, again without losing momentum. This performance is best at highlighting the interconnectiveness (not just behaviourally but materially) of the movements, with vivid attention to detail throughout. Especially nice, in the final movement, is the way the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss savour the music’s obsessiveness, sounding as if they’ve got themselves infuriatingly stuck in a rut.
Seven Sonatas for Two Violins (1951)
Despite its name, Pettersson’s final chamber work, the Seven Sonatas for Two Violins, has nothing to do with sonata form. Pettersson said of them, “I call the duets sonatas but I am not thereby claiming that they have anything to do with sonata form; they are much more timbral pieces with their own formal conceptions based on an original, investigative mind.” (Considering Pettersson’s clear interest at this time in contrapuntal techniques, at times evoking Baroque music, i’ve wondered whether there’s any connection to Handel’s Seven Sonatas for 2 Violins and Basso continuo, but haven’t found anything to suggest there is.)
In the same way that the three movements of Concerto No. 1 for String Orchestra become part of a single continuity, all seven sonatas feel less like standalone pieces than sections of a single, hour-long work. The recurring obsessive streak manifests strongly here too, with repetitions featuring prominently. The First Sonata has a stop-start, in-out quality, conflicted between opposite inclinations to be tentative and declamatory. The Second is more concerned with an interplay of repetitions and fragments of line, filled with playful scampering, gentle pulsations and quick spindly moments, the latter of which the Third makes one of two contrasting extremes, the other being soft regular material. The Fourth is a mixture of repetitive trilly interplay and playful unisons, governed by a very elastic tempo, while the Fifth veers between a measured pace and pushing on at top speed, falling into more repetitions and loops. Along the way, there’s the sense of something – possible something extant – trying to emerge, though what it might have been remains a mystery. Something similar takes place in the highly energetic Sixth, where through its five micro-movements one catches glimpses of waltzes, seemingly put together from fragments and then relentlessly (even desperately) pursued, as if the sheer force of motivic repetition might make whatever it is fully materialise. The short Seventh Sonata doesn’t so much conclude the cycle as feel strangely unsettling due to its brevity. As in Concerto No. 1 for Violin and String Quartet there’s the impression of a distorted folk music, obsessively worked on, becoming climactic – yet the fact that this line of enquiry is limited to a mere 3½ minutes suggests it’s a curtailed glimpse at something bigger. Perhaps it indicates a side effect of the recurring tone of obsession, that it doesn’t necessarily get closer to the intention; as such, maybe Pettersson’s cutting off of the Seventh is like a giving up.
Surprisingly, the Seven Sonatas have only been recorded on two occasions, the most recent of which was nearly a quarter of a century ago. That recording, included in the Complete Edition, is by Duo Gelland, and perhaps the best thing about their performance is that, as a duo, they feel absolutely inseparable. Unlike its immediate predecessors, this isn’t music striving for ferocity (tough to accomplish with just two violins) but exploring the relationship between the players, and in this respect the reciprocity and teamwork that Duo Gelland demonstrate is seriously engaging throughout, treating the work’s drama with considerable suppleness. The opening of the First Sonata is genuinely extraordinary, so faint that it’s as if a ghostly apparition were slowly appearing.
It’s worth mentioning an incomplete cycle included on Yamei Yu’s album of Pettersson’s chamber music. With the Leipzig Quartet’s Andreas Seidel, they only performs Sonatas 2, 3 and 7, but all three are outstanding. The filigree in No. 2 is exquisite, with a really strong sense of impetus, the music driven along by obsessive repetitions before pulling back into lyricism. No. 3 taps into a more protracted kind of ghostliness, yet making this sonata less impenetrable than Duo Gelland, whereas No. 7 is made suitably enigmatic, passion yielding to briskness to a palpable sense that there’s much more to be said. It’s such a shame Yu and Seidel never recorded the complete set.
Josef Grünfarb and Karl-Ove Mannberg recorded their cycle in the 1970s, and it’s the recording that proves to be the most compelling. Not only are they inseparably connected, but the playfulness is such that there are times it’s as if the duo were chasing each other around in a wild game. The back and forth is also beautifully executed, with a distinct sense of taking turns, conveying not just musical action but also musical conversation. Throughout, we feel ultra close to the players, and thereby more drawn into the curious quiddity of their actions, which here becomes a true, hour-long performance, where the obsession of the music suggests the Seven Sonatas are a continuity of attempts at something. The intense passion they bring to their performance can be read in different ways, sometimes keening, sometimes exultant. This recording reveals just how immediate and vibrant the Seven Sonatas are.
