AlfvA©n: Symphony No. 4 "From the Outermost Skerries"

Alfvén's Swedish 'Romeo & Juliet'

For many years the music of Hugo Alfvén (1872-1960) was hardly known outside his native Sweden except for the piece he called 'Midsommarvaka'('Midsummer Vigil') which is universally simply called 'Swedish Rhapsody' in the English-speaking countries. (It was actually No. 1 of three Swedish Rhapsodies he wrote.) But recently there have been a number of recordings of his important works, including his five symphonies. I have long admired the performances of these works recorded by Neeme Järvi, and I understand that Yevgeniy Svetlanov has also recorded them successfully. I had not acquired the earlier issues in this Naxos series but I so love the Fourth Symphony that I was eager to hear this new recording although I will admit I was a bit skeptical of a CD featuring a conductor, Niklas Willén, I'd known little of and an orchestra from Iceland. I needn't have feared, though. This is an outstanding release.

Symphony No. 4, subtitled 'From the Outermost Skerries,' Op. 39, took Alfvén almost twenty years to write. He began it in the early years of the century and didn't finish it until 1919. It is a one-movement work that falls neatly into four sections. It, like most of Alfvén's works, is programmatic. It tells of a young man and young woman, perhaps human, perhaps spirits, who fall in love in the 'skerries,' a series of barren and forbidding rocks that form part of the Stockholm archipelago. The musical language is very reminiscent of Richard Strauss, with rich harmonies, lush melodies, expert and seamless polyphony and brilliant orchestration. It calls for a large orchestra, along with tenor and soprano who sing lovely wordless cantilenas that frankly sound ecstatically erotic. (The excellent young Icelandic singers are Arndis Halla, soprano, and Johann Valdimarsson, tenor.) The young man sings in the first section, the young woman in the second, the two of them in the third, and then they are not heard in the fourth section as the sea seems to rise up and carry them off to their doom. [Alfvén's program is not precise and I have supplied some of my own thoughts on the matter.] Alfvén has provided extraordinary evocation not only of the lovers and their ecstasy but also of both the calm and rough seas surrounding the rocks. There is an extensive orchestral piano obbligato that is confined primarily to the brilliant upper register, seeming to depict sunlight glinting on the waves. The music was written during a time when Alfvén was frequently sailing amongst the skerries and he later said that he got his most valuable ideas for music while on the water.

I am happy to say that this performance is fully the equal of that of Järvi and the Stockholm Philharmonic, recorded in 1993. Each issue has a minor drawback. The Järvi does not provide separate tracks for the four sections of the symphony, while the Willén does. The Willén, which also includes the brilliant 'Fest-Ouverture' ('Festival Overture'), only lasts 58 minutes. I have to say that I was more than pleased with the sound and execution of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Recorded sound is fine; the dynamic range is very wide and the ppp opening of the symphony can barely be made out at an ordinary setting. (The same thing applies, to a lesser degree, to the Järvi recording.)

The budget price of the Naxos disc, of course, is a real plus.

TT=58:12

Recommended.

Scott Morrison January 25, 2005

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