Symphony 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 his life, his rheumatoid arthritis was becoming more severe, which no doubt explains the three-year period it took Pettersson to complete this work. The symphony continues the focusing of disruption heard in its predecessor, but where No. 5 obsessed about a small motif, No. 6 turns its attention to the last of Pettersson’s 24 Barfotasånger, ‘Han ska släcka min lykta‘ [He Will Extinguish My Lamp].
The work can be heard as falling into two sections, essentially defined by the extent to which the music from ‘Han ska släcka min lykta’ can be clearly discerned, each lasting for around half of the symphony’s duration. The piece begins with something of a throwback to No. 5, slow, very solemn string music with a repeating phrase in the bass. What follows in the remainder of the first half is the most prolonged period of extreme volatility that Pettersson had composed so far. The solemnity is all but lost in a maelstrom that’s characterised by recurring, rapidly developing swells. They’re like outbreaks of something noxious that causes nothing but anguish throughout the orchestra – the horns in particular, who regularly find themselves at the upper limits of their range. This is music caught in a constant state of roiling tempest, where there’s no time for the dazed aftermaths heard in Symphony No. 5; here, no sooner has one swell subsided than another is already brewing and beginning to build. So extreme is this that there are times the music almost sounds out of control, not so much composed as raw stuff spewed out. Yet order is there; indeed, there are times when it’s as if Pettersson himself is audibly fanning the flames of this conflagration. For all its immensity this half is another demonstration of a music that doesn’t really seem to be getting anywhere; momentum chugs once again, behaviour is cyclic, and the only ideas seemingly capable of making an impact are for the most part literal impacts, huge collisions that pepper the swells like craters on their surface.
Something remarkable happens shortly before the mid-point. Following a shrill climax, and with ongoing cries of agony continuing to sound, the brass become grandiose, a fundamental materialises below them and, seemingly impossibly (and on a first listen it can be easy to believe your ears are deceiving you), a perfect cadence takes place. It’s the first indication of where the second half will take us, into a place superabundant with song: tremulous, halting, desperate, fragmented and polarised, but – for 30 minutes at least – never-ending. At the heart of it is not so much an undercurrent as a source sometimes obfuscated, distorted and otherwise blocked out by the coruscating emotional heat pouring out. For all its ongoing volatile state, the music is nonetheless grounded, and the rudiments of harmonic progression underpin everything that happens from now on. As laments go, this one is often pulled inexorably in the direction of a processional, marshalled by assorted drums (snare, tenor and timpani) that won’t let up. Eventually, ‘Han ska släcka min lykta’ begins to be clearly heard, now rendered as a dirge, continually accompanied by the strangest kind of beat from brass and percussion, less a pulse than a weird kind of palpitation. The harmonies sometimes lose their grip, and even just a few minutes before the end Pettersson takes the symphony into broken territory, where vestiges of stuff float around and collide against each other. There’s a resurgence of the enormous swells from the first part, before everything recoils back, via another never-more-necessary-than-now perfect cadence, leading to a black funereal coda.
The Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Manfred Trojahn recorded Symphony No. 6 for CPO in 1993. While it has some significant strengths, it also has a sense of order and polish that, in the first half, lessens the impact of its white-hot intensity, and makes those swells seem less massive, as if seen from a distance rather than up close and personal. They maintain the prolonged periods of onslaught quite well, but it’s only in the second half that this performance really comes into its own. The occasional vague passages are given a superb nebulosity, really making one wonder what on earth is going to happen next, though in general Trojahn takes the music at such a sluggish pace that certain episodes feel like they’re continuing for too long, one of the primary risks of any performance of Pettersson’s symphonies.
My favourite recording of the work, by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra conducted by Okko Kamu, isn’t readily available. It was released on vinyl in 1976 and has never been reissued digitally. It’s an extraordinary performance, by far the most committed of all three recordings made so far, with Norrköping regularly sounding as if they were pushing themselves to – and perhaps just a bit beyond – the very point of what’s possible on their instruments, especially the horns. It’s such a no-holds barred performance that it has a genuine edge of the seat precariousness, making the work’s extremities truly terrifying, and in the second half captures a profound sense of devastation. This recording really can’t be reissued soon enough.
Happily, Norrköping have recorded the work again, over 30 years later, with Christian Lindberg, included in the BIS Complete Edition. Kamu has the edge, but this is nonetheless an outstanding performance that, as with many of their other recordings of the symphonies, reveals many details that can too easily be lost or hidden. They bring a really fleet momentum to the first half, and while the performance is tight, it in no way detracts from the work’s ferocity; indeed, there are times when its heightened swirling is like a predator circling for a kill. The swells bombard our ears as if from point-blank range, and while Lindberg makes the early traces of lyricism dangerously fragile, he avoids allowing any gentleness to become tangible until it’s unavoidable, relatively late in the piece. He fashions a curious, reposed beauty from its overlapping lyrical lines, like sitting within the eye of a storm. Yet when the song emerges, it’s not remotely gentle, relaxed or peaceful, but like a slow march to the scaffold, forced onward by those brass and percussion pulsations that here become something alien. These form the basis for some remarkable sequences where what Trojahn made nebulous, Lindberg turns into a kind of “no place” in the symphony, as if we’d stepped sideways into a parallel universe: a different kind of repose, but just as transient, before sagging back into the closing funeral march.
Symphony No. 7 (1966-1967)
Pettersson’s Symphony No. 7 marked a turning point in his career, from the perspective of public success. This is rather curious, as in many ways the work is a continuation of both the behavioural approach taken in the Sixth Symphony as well as its general structure, with an introduction, volatile first half and lyrical second half. The key difference, perhaps, is that where No. 6 encompasses extremes of violence and despair, No. 7 not only attenuates this somewhat, but also, in the latter half, features a more extensive episode of genuine warmth than in any of his previous works.
The short introduction is a mix of brisk, surly bass with an undulating line above, which in less than a minute has started to become dramatic. A crash ensues, the tempo gets confused, there’s a flash of something melodic, and a mordent suggests itself as a possible motif. The first half is a place of stark contrast, which inevitably leads to conflict. Pettersson introduces a tiny idea in the brass, a chugging rising triad, that in the way it keeps recurring, unchanging, starts to seem almost absurd. In no small part that’s because everything around that idea could hardly be more different: slithering string tremolandos, a snare drum getting involved, energy and momentum continually being brought to bear on this weird musical mote. Where its predecessor was all about big swells, in Symphony No. 7 it’s pretty much all or nothing, to the extent that to speak of climaxes is almost redundant, as so much of the music is heightened, playing out on what sound like elevated plateaux where nothing can stop them. Except there’s just as much nothing as there is all; despite incessant bursts of pounding and clatter, horns squealing even more acutely than in Symphony No. 6, and the percussion wanting to push everything along relentlessly, that tiny idea, still never changing, gradually has an effect. The first significant sign of it comes around 11 minutes in, when the work suddenly switches into a steady processional, articulated with an almost dirty majesty. It’s broken up before long but soon after that chugging triad is made the basis for another grand procession, slow and sad.
Two further massive crashes don’t so much derail this as do the opposite, redirecting the symphony into its second half, which opens with something akin to a chorale. The music finds some tentative tonal stability and starts to sing, simply and with restricted range, sounding cyclical, but nonetheless a song. Further disruptions throw increasingly desperate attacks at this melodic impulse but, like the triad in the first half, it proves to be just as dogged, eventually leading to a large, five-minute outpouring of the most lyrical warmth, a world away in both character and tenacity from the tempestuous first half. Though conflict returns, it’s not until this sequence has, on its own terms, concluded, which only makes the subsequent fragmentation of the music due to widespread disruption (harking back to the intense flux of Pettersson’s earlier symphonies) seem like a futile gesture, making a point rather than actively achieving something. And thus it doesn’t: the music finds its way, surprisingly effortlessly, back to melody, to a coda similar to that of No. 6, a drawn-out final chord with some final impacts dashing its surface. Though it was No. 6 that had the last of the Barfotasånger at its core, it’s impossible not to think of that song again now, particularly as, unlike there, it now ends in exactly the same key (B minor).
Possibly due to its popular success, Symphony No. 7 has been recorded more than any of Pettersson’s other symphonies, with five currently available. Considering he conducted the première, and the work was also dedicated to him, it’s surprising that one of the least effective recordings is by Antal Doráti, with the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. The only word to use for his approach is perfunctory. It’s certainly an adequate performance, and gives an impression of what the symphony is all about, but there’s little indication of the dynamic and dramatic range of the work, with everything boiled down to archetypes. It condemns the piece to being merely shrug-worthy, an uninvolving overview that sounds more like a cursory read-through than a polished performance. Even worse is CPO’s contribution to their Pettersson cycle, by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg under Gerd Albrecht. The dynamic range is even more feeble, with far too many scrappy passages (apparently pushing the players beyond their comfort zones) and a recurring sense of inertia, going through the motions, flat and uninspired. The second half has barely any warmth, the periods of disruption sound random, and the ending is a turgid bore.
Once again BIS has two recordings of the work under their belt, and surprisingly for their Complete Edition they didn’t turn to the most recent one, by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Christian Lindberg. And it’s just as well that they didn’t, as it’s an unexpectedly poor performance that horribly exaggerates the dramatic contour of the work. It’s more about ferocity and overkill than anything else, lacking any subtlety, with the effect that the overwhelming tutti plateaux just become compressed walls of noise, while the lyrical second half just bumbles along as if in a daze, ruined further by a harshness in the strings (unusual for Norrköping). It contorts and misrepresents Symphony No. 7 as some kind of unhinged, incoherent nightmare, which is very, very far from the truth.
There are, thankfully, two outstanding recordings. One is by Sergiu Comissiona with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, in a performance from the early 1990s. Though it’s one of the shortest of these recordings, Comissiona judges perfectly when to allow more time for the music to speak. The introduction is quick and strikingly ominous when the strings become angular, expanded into looming heft in the first part, as the plateaux get going. Yet while the high points are wow-inducing in their vivid extremity, Comissiona actively militates against them by revealing just how much of this section has a lyrical sensibility beneath the mayhem. The second half therefore makes complete sense when it abruptly arrives, with not just warmth but a sincerity and tenderness that suggest, for a time, that all weight has been lifted. This combination of intimidating overpressure and warm sublimity makes it a deeply compelling performance.
Before i first heard the other BIS recording, by Leif Segerstam and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra – included in the Complete Edition – i’ll admit i thought it wouldn’t work. At nearly 47 minutes, it’s by far the longest recording (Lindberg’s is almost six minutes shorter) yet, without ever dragging or dawdling, this only makes the symphony’s lyrical character have real time to expand and bloom. There are hints of the end right at the start, though they’re quickly forgotten in the unsettling way Segerstam lingers through the volatile opening sequences of the first half. The extremes are overwhelming, just terrifyingly immense, yet their details are always well-defined and crystal clear. Furthermore, Segerstam adjusts the scale and nature of these gigantic sonic peaks such that their force is never brute or blunt, but tailored and unique. Once the processions start, Norrköping project a tone of enormous sadness (made acute by their soaring horns), seamlessly passing into the second half, which contains some of the most gorgeous, plaintive, fragile music you’ll ever hear. The extent of this – to the point that the extended lyrical episode, dying away to nothing at its close, sounds like it must be the end of the symphony – is such that the final forays of volatility sound deeply, desperately disorienting, as if blindly locked, flailing madly. In anyone else’s hands, the long conclusion with its flickering heartbeat would sound like overindulgence, but here it seems entirely justified, not only in light of what took place earlier in the piece, but also what we’ve come through in the previous two symphonies. It’s a genuinely incredible recording, to my mind the defining performance of a work that deserves its popularity, but which – as those other recordings testify – can so easily find its musical language disfigured.
