Symphony 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 together serve to commemorate the Bulnes Square massacre. This took place on 28 January 1946, when the government of Chile opened fire on a rally intended to show solidarity with mine workers, killing six people (the most well-known being Ramona Parra, who subsequently became something of a communist icon) and wounding many others.
It’s easiest to explore this piece in direct reference to the three recordings that have been made of it. In this respect it bears some similarities with Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, a work with a problematic history in recordings due to its histrionically overblown opening movement, which has always tended to make choirs sound utterly demented. It takes a firm, wise hand to harness the crazed intensity (in Mahler’s case, beginning with Leonard Bernstein) and control it. Pettersson’s Symphony No. 12, subtitled “De döda på torget” [The Dead of the Square] runs the risk of becoming similarly overblown, and that’s exactly what happens in the earliest recording, from 1978, by the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Carl Rune Larsson. Larsson clearly felt the best thing to do was to lean into the emotional enormity of the piece and make that the chorus’s default position. One of the problems with this becomes apparent right from the start: you simply can’t hear the words. It’s partly the recording, i suspect, but in any case the singers unleash with such force that the text too often becomes a conveyor belt of borderline shouted blank vowels and consonants. The orchestral writing fares better, though more often than not they’re entirely swamped by the chorus. The overall effect of this performance is to drastically reduce the symphony’s dramatic and emotional range, such that it comes across as little more than an unyielding onslaught of pure outrage. We end up being first numbed and eventually repelled by such a relentless barrage of undifferentiated hectoring. Furthermore, the sense of a song cycle is also destroyed, instead sounding like a single, massive, 50-minute shoutfest comprising nine not very different sections. Tragically, the symphony’s final moments, where the harmonic language becomes finally clarified, is here entirely unconvincing, as if Pettersson had tagged on a final chord for the sake of it.
The first recording to demonstrate real understanding of the nuances of this unwieldy work is by Manfred Honeck with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir. Though not perfect, it’s a nonetheless excellent performance that greatly widens and deepens the scope of the work. For a start, it’s a whole lot easier to hear the words, in the process indicating in the opening lines everything about what the piece is, where it’s going, and how it’s going to do it: “I do not come to cry here where they fell: / I come to you, turn to you who are alive. / I turn to you and to myself, and pound on your breast.” Though outrage is a part of the symphony’s language, there’s a great deal more to it than that, and Honeck goes a long way to clarify this. That being said, the chorus is still a beast that’s only partly tamed (some might hear this as an advantage, of course), yet with the increase of control comes a much better appreciation of what’s going on in the orchestra. Their role is primarily that of accompaniment, though as one would expect Pettersson gives them some wonderfully intricate and full-bodied material, and they’re invariably pivotal in all the work’s most significant high points (unaccompanied writing for the voices is entirely absent in the piece). This orchestral clarity really helps to shape the symphonic trajectory, with a clearer sense of contour and allowing for some wonderfully intimate moments. By dialling things down a bit, the choral voice emerges now as not merely outraged but articulating lament, despair and also, crucially, angry determination. Far from repelling, their united voice impresses upon us – “pounding on our breast” – the importance of their words, culminating in a triumphal conclusion that, dramatically and harmonically, is convincing and makes complete sense.
Proof that this isn’t remotely as good as it gets is the most recent recording, conducted by Christian Lindberg with the Swedish Radio Choir, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and Norrköping Symphony Orchestra. Both the clarity – choral and orchestral – and the dramatic range of this performance are genuinely astonishing. So many additional elements are brought to the fore, one of which is the way (from the start, and on several occasions later in the work) the vocal writing is akin to a form of chant. Lindberg, alone of these three recordings, allows for real restraint at times, introducing in the second movement an air of mystery as the orchestra hushes while the vocal lines simplify. Such restraint doesn’t only make the climaxes sound with even greater force, but enables them to be reached by a more subtle, graduated accumulation, in the process making them more musically and emotionally understandable, a million miles from Larsson’s “fortissimo or bust” interpretation.
A myriad new details materialise in this recording: recurring hemiolas in the vocal writing; a wonderful passage in the the third movement when it’s as if the voices were being literally dragged downwards by immense weight; intricate wind lines that expand the lyrical dimension of the work; energetic brass figurations that increase the inner drama and make the subsequent swells all the more exciting and multifaceted. The sixth movement, in which the the dead are named, is especially powerful, particularly when the litany reaches Ramona Parra; uniquely, Lindberg makes this neither outrage nor lament, but triumph, hailing the name of a hero. In the midst of the clamour that follows, there’s a palpable sadness in the music, with the singers seemingly lingering on Parra’s name as if savouring it on their lips. Throughout this performance, there’s total, transparent clarity everywhere, never shying away from the wildly declamatory nature of the piece, embracing its equally important sense of unity. Lindberg guides the symphony into a more gentle, reflective final movement, intensity being replaced by richness and warmth, channelling celebration at its emphatic close, ending with the most convincing cadential full stop one could possibly imagine.
Vox Humana (1974)
Pettersson followed his Twelfth Symphony with another large-scale song cycle expressing similar sentiments, though turning away from the symphony’s robust mode of expression in favour of a more plaintive, resigned, downcast and simpler musical language. Vox Humana [The voice of humanity] is Pettersson’s last vocal work, and in many ways it leaps right back to his first, the 6 Songs composed nearly 40 years earlier. The words come from Latin American writers – among them Pablo Neruda, the source in Symphony No. 12 – and indigenous folk texts. Together they paint a bleak portrait of humanity, filled with images of death, aggression, poverty, hunger and treachery, articulated with varying forms of boredom, ennui and despair that occasionally muster the energy to become passionate, angry or bitterly ironic. Pettersson gave a succinct summary of his outlook in the piece, which concludes
…blessed is the poor one,
who finds purification in the hatred of the oppressor
in solidarity with the oppressed
and strength in the longing
for a life beyond the great exhaustion.
This is the voice of man.
VOX HUMANA
The work uses a quartet of soloists – who, apart from one song, always sing alone – with chorus and strings. Though the subject matter is somewhat forbidding, each song is relatively short, and Pettersson responds to the texts in varied, compelling and unexpected ways. ‘Ballad’, for example, sets a disturbing tale of “a cheerful, meandering voice”, which turns out to be a visitation from Death, in a gentle, undemonstrative way that sidesteps the implied drama, reinforcing its tone of doom. ‘En man går förbi’ [A Man Goes Past] unfolds as another example of the composer’s circular music, describing a litany of passers by, though here the numbness of the text is made lively, in a kind of blackly comic act of people-watching. It’s echoed in the following ‘Den obotfärdige’ [The Unrepentant], a choral song declaring both a sense of isolation from others and disaffection with life, which finds expression in blazing defiance. Another darkly amusing song is ‘Dikt hämtad från en tidningsnotis’ [Poem from an Item of News], portraying the antics of one Joáo Gostoso, who apparently drank, sang, danced, and then committed suicide in the local lagoon. It’s one of several occasions when dancing and death are in close proximity, turning these songs into so many danses macabres. One of them, ‘Dikt till en död vän’ [Poem to a Dead Friend] (actually referencing a friend who is only dead on the inside), is articulated as a tilted waltz, a ghostly dance with wraith-like accompaniment; another, ‘Dansvisa’ [Dancing Song], undermines the title by creating murky music that seemingly flows around the baritone’s ankles. The dances may be dead, but the emotion isn’t, and the penultimate song, ‘Min mor’ [My Mother] is perhaps the clearest demonstration of this, plaintive and heartfelt, made more plangent by the fleeting emergence of a solo violin line. Vox Humana closes with ‘Den stora glädjen’ [The Great Joy], essentially an artist statement from both Neruda and Pettersson, proclaiming, “I want my poems to be anchored to the ground / At the exits to factories and mines, / Anchored to the air at the triumph of the maltreated person.” It takes us back to the more incensed soundworld of Symphony No. 12, echoing thoughts of Ramona Parra at the line, “och kanske kommer de att säga: ‘Han var en kamrat'” [and perhaps they will say: ‘He was a comrade’].
In some ways, an ideal recording of this piece could be put together from the two currently available, since where one falls short, the other usually steps up. The being said, the weaker of the two is definitely the one in the Complete Edition, featuring the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Stig Westerberg. Released in 1976, it’s the first of BIS’s Pettersson recordings, and there are several occasions when its age is apparent, audibly straining during the work’s largest passages. Nonetheless some of the songs are absolutely outstanding. ‘Den obotfärdige’ is as literally unrepentant as one could possible imagine, forcefully wailing at the entire world, while ‘Svälten’ [Starvation] turns its tragic narrative into something paradoxically akin to a christmas carol, with the wordless vocal accompaniment sounding disturbingly dark. ‘Epitafium över en invasionssoldat’ [Epitaph for a Soldier of the Invasion] is a paradigm of angry indignation, its emotional charge manifesting in a tense atmosphere with huge swells. Though it’s one of the shortest songs, ‘Den sista dikten’ [The Final Poem] is one of the most moving in this recording, tenor Sven-Erik Alexandersson presenting a profound sense of weariness within the context of a darkly beautiful soundscape, and baritone Erland Hagegård is equally potent in ‘Min mor’, in an expression of utter intimacy.
Much better overall is the recording made by CPO in 2019 – coincidentally the last of their Pettersson recordings (so far) – featuring Musica Vitae and vocal group Ensemble SYD conducted by Daniel Hansson. Every aspect of the performance is stronger, in terms of both the performers and the sonics, which could hardly be more vivid. Ensemble SYD’s intonation and control in ‘Ballad’ is flawless, resulting in luminous floating chords, while in ‘För en kort minut’ [Just for a Moment], when the words shift from earth-bound worries to the moon and the stars, it’s as if the strings become transfixed in the nocturnal light. Ensemble SYD are especially engaging in the work’s more ironic and macabre episodes, practically laughing in the account of poor Joáo Gostoso, before the reality of his suicide hits home and they all become gloomy. They turn ‘Lynch’ into a fittingly grotesque mixture of lyricism and baying, violent chants. They’re at their best in the final two choral songs, ‘Dom över en förrädare’ [Sentence on a Traitor] and ‘Den stora glädjen’. Completely returning to the heightened world of Symphony No. 12, Hansson gets everyone to let rip in startlingly ferocious bursts of passion – a genuine shock, after what’s come before – shot through in ‘Den stora glädjen’ with sharp, dissonant spikes from the strings. They interpret Pettersson’s final paradox perfectly, at the phrase “i den stormiga höjden” [In the stormy height] turning inward and descending to deep registral depths, the words lost in the darkness.
