Pettersson tre gånger/Pettersson kolme kertaa

Dear Friends,

I am a very lucky person.

When I was living in the states, I resigned myself to the likelihood that Pettersson was just another one of those composers who I could only enjoy on recordings, but never in concert. 

In the next 14 days, I will experience something I never thought was possible in one lifetime. In the next 14 days, I will hear three, that's right, three (tre/kolme in Swedish/Finnish) Pettersson works in concert. If you include the performance of the Concerto for Violin and String Quartet that I attended last April, that will make four Pettersson works in a little more than half a year. 

Tomorrow I will be heading to Norrköping to attend a performance of Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping SO in Symphony No. 16 and 4, and on 15 November, in my adopted home of Helsinki the Tapiola Sinfonietta will be performing the Concerto for String Orchestra No. 1 under the baton of Jan Söderblom, who himself performed the Symphony No. 7 in Tampere, Finland (I was there too!) back in 2008. 

Regarding Norrköping, it looks like I will have a full schedule: dress rehearsal in the morning, followed by Christian Lindberg's press conference on the Pettersson Project 2013-18. There will also be a viewing of Vox Humana, the old Pettersson documentary which will be included as a bonus DVD with the upcoming BIS release of the Symphony No. 9. In the foyer of the concert hall there will be a exhibition of Gunnar Källström's darkly intense black and white photos of Pettersson. Following the concert there are rumors of some kind of party? Throughout the day and evening I look forward to meeting with Pettersson enthusiasts who have come from near and far for this massive event.

Expect to hear my reports on all of these upcoming events and concerts in the coming weeks. 

I am a very, very lucky person. I thank everyone who has made this possible!

Guest blog entry, Christopher Russell

Dear Friends,

Earlier this year, some very fortunate people in east Los Angeles had the opportunity to hear the first live performance of a Pettersson symphony in the US in almost 30 years. The conductor of that performance, Christopher Russell, has kindly agreed to share his thoughts for my blog. Enjoy reading, and thank you very much Chris!

In March of 2013, I conducted a performance of Pettersson’s 7th Symphony in California with my terrific orchestra at Azusa Pacific University. I have long been fascinated and moved by Pettersson’s music and was very happy to finally get the chance to program one of them. Amazingly, this was the first performance of a Pettersson symphony in the US in almost 30 years and was the first time one of his symphonies had ever been played in California. I know that on the Allan Pettersson Enthusiasts Facebook page, a lot has been said about wishing to program symphonies other than the 7th since that one seems to be done more than all of the others combined. I thought very hard about programming the 8th instead, partly because that was the first one of his symphonies that I heard and that is the symphony that started my lifelong admiration for his music. In the end I decided on the 7th because I believe it to be a perfect introduction to his music for those in the orchestra and audience who did not know his music, which was virtually everyone. Plus at about 45 minutes, it’s not as long as some of the others and would not need as much rehearsal time. Overall, of course, it is really a masterpiece and one that I felt very strongly about being able to do successfully. Much of my thought process, some player reactions and a short video were kindly published by Norman Lebrecht in his blog Slipped Disc back in February. In my orchestra we have recently done Mahler’s 2nd Symphony and a couple of Shostakovich symphonies (the 10th Symphony and the weird but wonderful 2nd Symphony) so I told them that they may hear some similarities at first when playing Pettersson but in the end Pettersson sounds like no one else. I also told them I have heard all of his symphonies by and in them there are moments of great anger and overwhelming sadness but also unbelievable beauty and peace. However, I told them, I’ve never heard a single happy or joyous moment in any of his works (if any other listener knows of one in his symphonies, I’d be curious to know). With that we launched in. Once they started tackling the difficulties and the uniqueness of it, many began to understand the music more fully. Pettersson is a composer who likes writing in extreme registers, particularly very high registers in the flutes and violins. You need to have very strong sections here in order to pull off his pieces. Fortunately, I have that. Also, the horns frequently play lots of high, loud and long tones, which is incredibly taxing on the players. I told my principal that he would absolutely need an assistant and should not play first on any other piece on the program, which he did. These are absolutely not easy pieces to play. (The program had two Brahms pieces on the first half, Tragic Overture and Alto Rhapsody, making for a very somber evening.) We had about three weeks to put the program together. This is longer than a professional orchestra but about average for most top music schools. Rehearsals progressed at a good pace but I had to make sure to leave a couple of rehearsals for complete run throughs. Playing for 45 minutes is not a big deal, playing 45 continuous minutes is a big deal. When you play for that long, you need to carefully pace yourself in ways that are different than a multi-movement symphony. One part of the score that I always found enigmatic was the high harmonics at the end. I couldn’t quite decide whether this was a peaceful end or a prelude to another tragedy that would occur after the music ended. While rehearsing it, I was told by a colleague of mine that Pettersson told him that the ending is either angels singing or gang members whistling sardonically. These two very opposite images actually made complete sense to me. The ending that I always thought enigmatic is actually supposed to be that way! The end of the 7th can be interpreted by any listener to decide which way the ending leans. Before we played it in concert, I gave a spoken introduction to the audience and had the orchestra play excerpts from it to give them a deeper understanding of the journey they were about to take. The performance went extremely well and I was very proud of my players. It got a standing ovation from many in the audience. For me personally, it was one of the most exhausting pieces I’ve ever conducted both mentally and physically. I felt more drained after this performance than after other giant pieces I’ve conducted like Beethoven 9th and Shostakovich’s 11th Symphony, both longer than the Pettersson with the Shostakovich also played continuously. My orchestra’s reaction was a little different than Alun Francis’. It was certainly mixed there is no question about that (comments are in the Slipped Disc blog.) I did have some great reactions though. I will give you two examples. One was the contrabassoon player, who I hired for the occasion. He is a seasoned player with many orchestras. After the concert, he came up to me and said how grateful he was to have played this piece. He told me how the string chorale in the 7th was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever heard and how he would be listening to more of his works. I’ll close with an email that I received the day after the performance. It perfectly encapsulates the power and long lasting effect that Pettersson’s music can have:

I was at the symphony orchestra concert last night and I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciated the performance of Pettersson's 7th symphony. When the piece was introduced I had no context it and was fairly worried that I wouldn't be able to track with the music, as it is such a long, continuous movement. However, once the orchestra started playing, I was completely enraptured and enjoyed every moment of it. This piece spoke deeply to my being and I was left with a sense of awe at the end. I've found that when you come across a piece of music that resonates so purely with you, you hold onto that moment for all its worth. This was one of those moments for me. For me, and I think for Pettersson, there were angels singing at the end in those violins. Christopher Russell Orange County, California

Guest blog entry, Alun Francis

Dear Friends,

As most of you know, Alun Francis is the most prolific Pettersson conductor on record, having recorded 9 of the symphonies for CPO using various orchestras. Despite the tremendous challenges of this music and the different ensembles involved, Francis and his bands consistently delivered the goods. Imagine the Pettersson discography if it was not for this man's tremendous efforts, of which all of us as Pettersson enthusiasts are eternally grateful.

Well, you can count on me to not disappoint you, oh Pettersson enthusiasts. Similar to Robert von Bahr, I asked Francis if he would be willing to write a piece for this blog in time for Pettersson's 100th birthday. Although I received a positive response, I didn't hear anything until I asked him again a few weeks ago. This time around, we got a piece, and another enlightening one it is. 

Thank you, thank you, thank you Maestro Francis for taking the time to write this! Without further adieu...

Because of my interest in lesser known (or even forgotten) composers I've often been asked to perform or to record the music of composers who have either been forgotten or willfully ignored. So who even got the idea to ask me to take a look at the music of Pettersson? That was of course Burkhard Schmilgun of CPO. At the time that I first met him he was playing in the 2nd violins of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie where I had just been appointed Principal Conductor. We would talk about the various composers I had chosen to perform and I found him to be an extremely knowledgeable musician. At one stage I even tried to persuade him to conduct, for he certainly had the aptitude. 

At another time I was conducting the music of Ernst Krenek with our orchestra at some festivals in Austria and I invited Mr. Schmilgun to listen in on my discussions with Krenek. (Burkhard was also writing and speaking on music for a local radio station). After I had performed his music in Vienna, Krenek apparently told his American wife that, should his lost 4th Symphony (1947) ever be found, I should be the one to bring it to the public's attention. That did in fact happen when the work was found after Krenek's death.

Burkhard Schmilgun went on to become the director, artists and repertoire of the recording company CPO and, as I wrote, it was he who got me interested in Pettersson.

Reading through the scores of his symphonies (half of which were written by hand, presumably by the composer) I was struck by the trichotomy of his musical language. There seemed to me to be three elements in his music, each one fighting to gain prominence. It was only after I read about Pettersson's childhood that I understood why.

I will digress for a moment and suggest that any musician wishing to interpret the true message and spirit of a composer would be at a serious disadvantage without knowing about their background and childhood. If you don't know about Brahm's early life in the slums of Hamburg you will find it difficult to explain his relatively antisocial attitude to many people in Vienna, especially high society ladies. You will find it especially hard to understand his steadfast holding to the rules of structure. Bruckner, Mozart, Beethoven etc., all have stories to tell and that by just "enjoying" their music , you are missing out half of the reasons why they wrote as they did.

This is proven beyond question when it comes to the three major elements that govern Pettersson's works: Banality, Religion and Strife, which only occasionally find relief or peace of mind.

1) Banality. Petterson's father was an alchoholic and the young Allan Pettersson was brought up in one of the poorest areas of Stockholm where alcohol and prostitution were the currency of the day.

2) Religion. Pettersson's mother was a devout Christian and a very active member of the "Salvation Army" the folk harmonies used in their songs appear in every single one of his symphonies. They had become an integral part of his musical language.

3) The Strife that these two opposites caused in the young Allan are so clear to see in his music if you know them to be there. 

(Most of these facts are now on the internet, but at the time I started to study his music, most of my colleagues hadn't even heard of him).

I suppose there might be an extra problem to add to the above, especially around and certainly after his 5th Symphony. His arthritis was truly crippling. I've seen a film of him trying to get downstairs from his apartment to the street. If you can get to see it, it will bring tears to your eyes, as it did to mine. 

Just to know these facts about his life will already make the listener more aware of the tensions under which he existed.

It is inevitable that, partly through his nature, especially after he became ill and partly by the rejection he suffered for most of his life, that he was often not the easiest person in the world and he was not liked, especially in his home city of Stockholm. 

In the nineties whilst conducting both the big orchestras in Stockholm I often brought up the name of Pettersson and it was almost always greeted by either silence or sarcasm. Opinions are hard to change. But to be fair to my colleagues, I had been partly responsible for the resurrection of someone they had rejected.

Do orchestras like performing his music? Most certainly not. As an ex-orchestral musician I am used to hearing comments but in the case of Pettersson, orchestral musicians in different countries would often come up to me in the coffee break and ask me why I even bothered.

Well bothered I did, and I'm not sorry.

Alun Francis.