Allan Pettersson: Symphonies 5 & 7 cover

Allan Pettersson: Symphonies 5 & 7

Composer
Released

Paralyzed by a debilitating case of rheumatoid arthritis, the Swedish composer Allan Petterson was largely confined to his cramped apartment in a loud industrial neighborhood of Stockholm while writing his Seventh Symphony in 1967. The psychological toll of his surroundings and near-complete isolation courses through the work. A hulking 40-minute monolith, the Symphony is driven by a menacing two-note motif that, like a Rothko color field painting, sluggishly oozes bleak grays and blacks across a colossal orchestral canvas. Christian Lindberg’s 2018 recording with the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, released as part of an ongoing effort to record all of Pettersson’s orchestral works for Bis, reveals unexpected tenderness in the Symphony’s broad brushstrokes, aspiring to what the composer called the ultimate aim of his music: “to rediscover the song once sung by the soul.” 

Zev Kane

Suggestions
Don Gillis: Music Inspired by the American Southwest cover

Don Gillis: Music Inspired by the American Southwest

Albany Symphony Orchestra, David Alan Miller
Haydn: Nelson Mass; Te Deum cover

Haydn: Nelson Mass; Te Deum

Trevor Pinnock, The English Concert
Ravi Shankar: Sukanya cover

Ravi Shankar: Sukanya

Ravi Shankar, London Philharmonic Orchestra, David Murphy
Project W: Works by Diverse Women Composers cover

Project W: Works by Diverse Women Composers

Chicago Sinfonietta, Mei-Ann Chen
Venezia Millenaria cover

Venezia Millenaria

Jordi Savall, Hespèrion XXI
Schumann: The Symphonies cover

Schumann: The Symphonies

Christoph von Dohnányi, Cleveland Orchestra
Aranjuez cover

Aranjuez

Orchestre National Du Capitole De Toulouse, Thibaut Garcia, Ben Glassberg