Following 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.
Concerto No. 2 for String Orchestra (1956)
The Second Concerto for String Orchestra leaps straight back over the convolutions of the early symphonies to the highly energised counterpoint of the first string concerto. It’s again structured in three movements, but where Concerto No. 1 had the sense of a single narrative, No. 2 (as in Symphony No. 3) allows more discrete contrast between them, though, as ever, the music is rarely far from a considerable state of flux. We’re again presented with a music practically militating against itself, the fast, rhythmic counterpoint that opens the piece almost immediately being undermined by more ruminative tendencies. The quick material is typically lively, and more playful than ever, particularly when Pettersson introduces canonic sequences and switches to more chamber-like formations. Nonetheless, it’s as if the piece can’t wait to get to the middle movement, the slow centre of the work that’s marked “Dolce e molto tranquillo” but that seems to be more an ideal than an actual possibility. Even more than in the Third Symphony (more than ever before in Pettersson’s major works, in fact), the lyrical music is allowed to expand, its traces of diatonic harmony being regularly blanched by clashes and clusters.
The tempestuous final movement, longer than the last two movements combined, is something of a synthesis of them. Fast counterpoint is restored, but again challenged, held up by halting fragments, angular ideas from individuals, seemingly losing its footing and trudging along, becoming contrapuntally dense and even lost in an occasional reverie. Along the way, the impression that Pettersson was hinting at Shostakovich’s DSCH motif in the first movement now seems unquestionable, becoming an obsessive presence, while the music’s lyrical side – as if trying to reach for the ultimate counterbalance – invokes, of all things, Barber’s Adagio for Strings. The outcome is, by now, a familiar one: no resolution, but a complex intermingling of these differently-charged ideas, the counterpoint becoming fraught and shrill, the momentum going in circles for a time, and everything seemingly becoming erased into blank staccatos shortly before the end. Yet somehow Pettersson wrestles the music toward an unexpected cadence – only for it to be ruined by a final recurrence of DSCH, veering it off-course in the closing seconds.
It’s a shame that the recording of Concerto No. 2 for String Orchestra included in the BIS Complete Edition is actually the worst of the three that are available. Performed by the Nordic Chamber Orchestra with Christian Lindberg, it initially sounds promising, with the shared motifs in the opening moments sounding genuinely ominous and threatening, particularly in the bass. But before long it all starts to sound terribly matter of fact, even anonymous, as if they’re just going through the motions. The central lyricality sounds blank and uninvolving (Lindberg was perhaps aiming for inscrutability), extended into the similar material in the final movement, which sounds similarly remote (and the Barber references lack warmth). Even the weird ending feels mannered, as if everyone knew it was coming. Overall it just doesn’t tap into the lifeblood of the piece, either its spritely counterpoint or the warm glow of its reflective inner music.
Much better is Petter Sundkvist with Musica Vitae, in a recording dating from the mid-noughties. They also leave the slow movement sounding rather wan and faceless, but their handling of the counterpoint is quick, playful and fluid, which in the last movement becomes a very convincing convoluted synthesis of elements. That strange ending here becomes unexpected and tragic, begging all sorts of questions about what we’ve just heard.
Best of all – and by a large margin – is the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss conducted by Johannes Goritzki, who are just as exhilarating and moving in this concerto as they were in No. 1. They bring a swiftness, a brightness and a clarity to the contrapuntal intricacy lacking in both the other recordings. As the counterpoint becomes challenged, there’s real intimacy in the chamber digressions, an early demonstration of how deftly they handle the work’s multitudinous gear changes, one minute subdued, the next all muscle, the next spindly and strange. Their rendition of the slow movement is marvellous, managing to tease out its emotional weight by, paradoxically, making the music really icy, making that “dolce … tranquillo” even more optimistically distant. They bring a real sense of swagger to the return to upbeat material in the final movement (the DSCH motif almost becomes sarcastic), Barber actually sounds uncannily like Barber here, which only makes the music more fittingly disorienting, and the way they fully commit to the shrill ferocity of its later complexity is practically nerve-shredding. It’s a deliriously exciting performance, full of what this work needs more than anything else, spontaneity.
Concerto No. 3 for String Orchestra (1956-1957)
i’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Pettersson’s Concerto No. 3 for String Orchestra is his first true masterpiece. That’s not to say the previous works aren’t successful, or compelling, but in this work he manages to bring together the contrapuntal impulse from the previous two string concertos with the more tortuous narratives permeating the first three symphonies. That being said, it can come across as a tough proposition, and an even tougher listen, its three movements lasting nearly an hour in duration.
Once again, the work displays a fundamentally disruptive musical behaviour, though whereas previously this has felt like a combination of influences from both without and within, here the entire piece seems introspective, an altogether more heartfelt, and heart-rending, articulation of difficulty and pain from grappling with a tough external predicament. So it is that in the initial moments we pass through a bold, lyrical opening, strong angular ideas, some back and forth between individuals and the whole orchestra, before everything comes almost to a stop. From here, things get moving via a chugging kind of non-momentum (something that will return in many of Pettersson’s subsequent works) that sometimes leads to speed but just as often treads water, and most often seems to be the backdrop for an almost total sense of insecurity and uncertainty.
From the perspective of the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss and Johannes Goritzki, who made the first complete recording, that’s the essence of the piece. Initially, they treat it as an exciting prospect, presenting its constant state of flux as spontaneous high drama, playing out with no way of knowing where we’re headed. They strike a strong balance between the rhythmic elements and the recurring lyrical outbursts. The former come across as surprisingly intense, as Pettersson often reduces the complexity and frequency of the counterpoint, favouring using the strings as a mass object. The nature of the lyricism is equivocal: tender? pained? The answer they provide comes in the final two movements, which Goritzki takes enormous time over, particularly the central Mesto which here becomes the most massive landscape. The overall impression is of a music increasingly unsure, and unable, to resolve its way out of this situation, finding itself in nebulous cul-de-sacs, getting bogged down in passages that lead nowhere, along the way sounding increasingly resigned. Coupled to this, though, is a distinct impression that this is infinitely better than just stopping completely. Thus a grim, dogged determination emerges as the concerto continues, where the outbreaks of passion find themselves ever more dark and enervated. That recurring chugging is seemingly all that the energy can provide; momentum is more an aspiration than a possibility.
There’s an interesting alternate take on this via a recording of just the second movement made by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra with Stig Westerberg way back in 1960, just three years after it was completed (and also the earliest recording of any of Pettersson’s music). It might seem a strange idea to perform the Mesto movement in isolation, yet one could argue that a great deal of what it contains constitutes a microcosm of most of the complete work (though not the counterpoint). Perhaps due to its age, the recording lacks warmth, and the execution is rather ragged at times in terms of both intonation and coordination. Yet it’s a quicker performance of this movement than Goritzki, and that in itself gives a fresh perspective that challenges his interpretation that it’s all about some kind of Beckett-like “Keep going, going on, call that going, call that on”, or even, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” In this recording, focusing on what was at this point the most extended lyrical music Pettersson had ever composed, there’s something of the endless melodic searching that fills the Adagio of Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, and which is equally interrupted. There’s a lovely intimacy captured in the reduced, chamber portions of the piece, at one point even suggesting a humble harmonium is accompanying. Without a doubt, in Goritzki’s hands this movement loudly begs the question of whether Pettersson is deliberately wallowing in sadness, but that’s entirely absent with Westerberg. It’s clear that this is what the music (and by implication, the rest of the work) is about, an effort to resolve something, that’s being continually disrupted. It’s stuck in a rut, quietly flailing, trying – as the music keeps hinting – to reach a cadence that could in every sense be described as perfect.
Neither of these gives the Concerto anything like the clarity and certainty that Christian Lindberg and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra bring to it, in the recording included in the Complete Edition. This is honestly one of the most extraordinary performances i’ve heard of anything. Even more than with the Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss there’s the impression of total spontaneity, an exhilarating, fully involving and immersive drama, where we feel pulled into each passing moment. They bring heft to the first movement, and with it a tangible sense of the back and forths as actively argumentative, not merely passively disruptive or even playful. Muted passages become sinister, and the extent of the athleticism in the rhythmic and contrapuntal sequences only makes the contrast with the lyrical music all the more extreme. As such it projects much more emotional variety, a wonderful mixture of genuine caprice and utter heartache. Thus the more sustained passages, which in the other recordings seem to be deeply reflective, have more potential, even suggesting brief moments of distant, tentative triumph.
But where this recording is most extraordinary is in the central Mesto. A full five minutes shorter than Westerberg, this movement comes alive like never before. There’s no wallowing whatsoever, but rather a massive, heartfelt outpouring that seeks tonal security but is continually interrupted, redirected and distorted by the weight of tragedy. That quasi-harmonium passage i mentioned here becomes akin to a hymn, and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra holds nothing back through the lyrical extremes, which are rendered as gorgeous as they are heartbreaking. We’re increasingly conscious of a music almost unhinged by circumstance; dense clustery material that also permeates this movement sounds extremely uncomfortable, as if all the players were packed tightly together, and by the end it’s so heavyweight that the ongoing wrangling clearly has practically no energy to continue. After this, Lindberg keeps the final movement just as tight, with more and more sense of a music forcing itself onward, with another ghostly hymn appearance, weird possible birdsongs materialising and eventually the total sense of everything breaking down into halting fragments, vestiges of chugging and a blank octave unison, literally dying in front of us.
This is a literally astonishing performance, and the only one so far where Concerto No. 3 makes complete sense. This is music of the most agonised doubt and discomfort, yet matched by a determination to keep going in a desperate attempt to resolve something and find a way beyond. Despite the tragic nature of the work, Lindberg and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra don’t present it as a fait accompli, doomed from the start, but rather the more relatable result of optimism and energy being vanquished by odds that turn out to be insurmountable. It is truly one of the great tragic statements of 20th century music.
