Composer: Allan Pettersson
Orchestra: Norrköping Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Christian Lindberg
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: BIS
Catalogue: BIS2038
Release: 2014
Size: 312 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Symphony No. 9
01. Beginning
02. 3 bars after Fig. 27
03. 3 bars before Fig. 58
04. 2 bars before Fig. 88
05. 3 bars after Fig. 111
06. Fig. 139
07. 5 bars after Fig. 153
08. 4 bars after Fig. 189
09. Fig. 203
Allan Pettersson composed his Ninth Symphony in 1970, two years after the Seventh had been given a triumphant première conducted by Antal Dorati. This had brought him greater recognition than ever before, but at the same time his health was deteriorating even further, and shortly after completing the Ninth Pettersson was hospitalized for a period of nine months. It is striking that he at such a time should have chosen to compose what is the longest of all his works – in the score Pettersson himself estimated the duration to ‘65–70 minutes’, and the first recording of the work actually lasted for more than 80 minutes. As so many of the symphonies, the work is in one single movement which may be described as an extended struggle in which harmony is the ultimate winner. As Pettersson himself had said about an earlier work: ‘If one fights one’s way through a symphony one needs to achieve consonance and harmony even if it takes twenty hours to do so.’ In the case of the Ninth, this harmony is summed up more concisely than ever before or after, in the final two chords which form a plagal or ‘Amen’ cadence in F major. Completing a cycle for BIS of Pettersson’s symphonies, Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra have been receiving great critical acclaim for previous instalments – most recently a Sixth described in International Record Review as ‘a release that could well be the ideal introduction to Pettersson’s singular musical vision’. About the same disc, the reviewer in Gramophone wrote: ‘Lindberg’s empathy for Pettersson’s music is once again shown in the Sixth, where he catches its dark atmosphere to perfection, pacing its progress through the succession of climaxes superbly well.’
Despite its imposing length, Allan Pettersson’s Symphony No. 9 is an intensely concentrated work, built on a simple chromatic scale heard at the beginnning, and developed into 70 minutes of astonishing contrapuntal activity and fertile regeneration. While tonal in a technical sense, this symphony is harmonically complicated and frequently dissonant, so listeners should expect a challenge to their sense of key and form, notwithstanding the oddly serene resolution of the piece in F major. Even more important are the listener’s resilience and sitzfleisch, because this long single-movement work is a bracing experience, with much of the music flying by at breathtaking speed and with fierce, persistant energy. Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra demonstrate their ability to play with exacting precision and virtuosic brilliance, and it’s an extraordinary display of cohesion, because the ensemble moves unnervingly as a single entity. The hybrid SACD is packaged with a DVD of a documentary on Pettersson, “Människans röst” (“Vox humana”), made for Swedish televion with English subtitles.