Search - Ture Rangstrom, Michail Jurowski, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra :: Ture Rangström: Complete Symphonies (Box Set)

Swedish Hyper-Romanticism

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 12/05/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Sweden has enjoyed an active and high-class musical life since the Gustavian period of the seventeenth century, when the kings indulged their taste for Handelian-style opera and drew on the talents of native composers learned in the idiom. By the late-nineteenth and early twenteth centuries, most of the major Swedish cities had acquired respectable symphony orchestras and a passel of Swedish composers had emerged who could demonstrate their expertise in the standard genres - symphony, concerto, symphonic poem, concert-suite. Among these figured prominently such names as Hugo Alfvén, Vilhelm Peterson-Berger, Vilhelm Stenhammar, and Kurt Atterberg. In the teens of the twentieth century a new name appeared, helped along by Stenhammar in his capacity as music-director of the Gothenburg Orchestra Society. The new kid was Ture Rangström (1884-1947), a protegé of the playwright August Strindberg. While Rangström did have the benefit of brief study with Hans Pfitzner and Julius Hey, he basically taught himself how to compose, first as a song-writer and then, more ambitiously, as an operatist and a symphonist. Is it Nicolas Slonimsky who describes Rangström as belonging to the school of "Swedish hyper-romanticism"? The epithet fits, whatever its origin, because of the great vital impulse in Rangström's scores; he uses the orchestra quite lavishly (he certainly did not learn this from Hans Pfitzner!), and seeks to express the Nietzschean "Yea" in the most affirmative manner possible. In this, he somewhat resembles Carl Nielsen, but he also shows an affinity with Stenhammar, whose impulsive G-Minor Symphony Rangström would have known. CPO now issues its previously à-la-carte survey of Rangström's symphonies as a three-CD set, at about half the price that collectors would have paid on a one-at-a-time basis. The performances, by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra under Michail Jurowski, tap right into Rangström's spirit and make the case for this composer in an immediate and convincing way. Let's take it symphony by symphony. The SYMPHONY NO. 1 "In Memoriam August Strindberg" comes from 1914, two years after the death of its dedicatee. While not a program symphony, Rangström's First does try to portray the phenomena that interested Strindberg: The eternal human impulse to life and creativity in conflict with the limitations of time and place; the struggle for self-expression; the artistic battle to bring order out of chaos. Two big movements ("Jäsningstid" ["Time of Struggle"] and "Legend"), both full of Dionysiac enthusiasm and ballad-like pathos, yield to two shorter movements. Rangström avails himself much less of counterpoint than Alfvén or Peterson-Berger, perhaps for want of mastery as his critics sometimes charged; his textures tend to conform to "vertical" or theme-and-accompaniment rather than "horizontal" or polyphonic forms of organization. He cultivates mood, atmosphere, the lyric period. The SYMPHONY NO. 2 "Mitt Land" ("My Country") comes from 1919, and arranges itself in three movements rather than the conventional four, but nevertheless requires more performing-time than the First. The movements carry these names: "Sagan" ("The Tale"), "Skogen, Vågen, Sommarnatten" ("Wood, Wave, Summer Night"), and "Drömmen" ("The Dream"). Rangström does not quote folksongs, but contrives his themes to exhibit the outline of Swedish melody; the intense evocation of nature also conforms to the Swedish character. "Sagan" is by turns yearning and martial, with a tender middle section. "Skogen, Vågen, Sommarnatten" cultivates the same ecstasy of what the Scandinavians call "The Iron Nights" as in Alfven's "Midsommarvaka." "Drömmen" hearkens back to the composer's ties to Strindberg, who wrote a fantastic "Dream Play," but Rangström's fantasy is energetic and without pessimism. Rangström's one-movement SYMPHONY NO. 3 "Sång under Stjärnorna" ("Song under the Stars") comes from 1929. In the ten years since the Second Symphony, the composer had made good most of his youthful compositional deficiencies: In particular, "Song under the Stars" sees an increased exploitation of contrapuntal devices; the working-out of the material yields a greater complexity than hitherto. In fact, being based on one of Rangström's own songs, "Bön till Natten" ("Prayer to the Night"), and constituting a set of variations on the song-theme, the Third Symphony anticipates the Scandinavian technique of "metamorphosis," championed by Vagn Holmboe and Niels Viggo Bentzon and adopted in effect, if not under the name, by Swedes like Karl-Birger Blomdahl in the 1950s. (Rangström also anticipates Allan Petterson in basing a symphony on a previously written "romans," or voice-with-piano composition.) If one were looking for a known reference, it might be Sir Arnold Bax. Rangström's Third has a Baxian feel to it. The SYMPHONY NO. 4 "Invocatio" comes from 1936 and derives from an organ-piece written in 1933; the orchestration includes a fairly prominent organ part, although this is not really a concertante symphony. Despite the asymmetry of its construction (three short movements followed by a long movement followed by one more short movement), the Fourth makes a strong impression. Whether it is really a symphony or not is another matter. The program in this set includes the "Dityramb," contemporary with the First Symphony, and the "Intermezzo drammatico," contemporary with the Second. Carl Ruggles, the cranky Yankee, once said that great music must surge. At its best, Rangström's music does surge. I recommend this set."

Far better than I expected!

Martin Selbrede | The Woodlands, Texas | 12/21/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The previous reviewer hit most of the highlights and backstory. This is excellent, compelling music-making. The fact that each symphony is more of a dramatic work than an example of hard-core symphonic development doesn't take away from Rangstrom's achievement in the slightest. If that makes these works detectably "stream-of-consciousness," so what? Spontaneity is hardly a crime if an ordering principle still rules over the soundscape, even if that ordering principle isn't conventional sonata-allegro form or multi-layered contrapuntal development.



I wasn't expecting the one-movement 3rd Symphony to come across as a satisfying entity-in-itself, but I was surprised at how well it cohered. The 1st and 2nd symphonies are outstanding as well, not to mention the set of miniatures (the intermezzi) and other miscellaneous works included to round out the package. Where I expected great things -- the orchestra-plus-organ 4th symphony with the enhanced instrumental palette -- I came away disappointed. I think it's the weakest piece in this box set. It didn't help matters any that as I listened to the 4th symphony's Toccata movement, I immediately recognized it from Segerstam's "Earquake" album, where that movement received a far more incisive, snarling interpretation. This version's Toccata appeared lackluster in comparison, compounded by the too-smooth voicings chosen for the pipe organ.



That all the works are imbued with a deeply Swedish emotive core goes without saying -- this is nationalism on a grand scale. Without a doubt, Ture Rangstrom is unjustly overlooked as a major 20th century symphonist. This box set was worth every penny, and is recommended without qualification. As I work through the Kurt Atterburg symphonies, I hope to get a comparative feel of how these two divergent near-contemporaries approached the matter of Swedish music. (I have no dog in that fight -- I'm American, of German heritage.)"

Truly interesting, inventive and intense music in good perfo

G.D. | Norway | 02/07/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The late-romantic/post-romantic period was a period of remarkable musical fertility in Sweden. After a long time with a scarcity of distinctive compositional voices a group counting among them Peterson-Berger, Stenhammar, Alfvén, Rangström and Atterberg took the music of Söderman and Wagner as a point of departure and went on to compose a long list of symphonies, operas and other works of remarkably high quality and consistently of interest. Ture Rangström (1884-1947) is not the most famous of them, perhaps, but - and despite clearly belonging to the post-romantic tradition - in many ways the most forward-looking of the five mentioned.



His music is generally powerful, bold, intensely dramatic and usually rather dark. And while the CPO series of his complete symphonies and a selection of orchestral works has revealed no unqualified masterpieces, there is much to savor in these works, and anyone who likes Sibelius or Alfvén should really give them a try.



Volume 1: Dithyramb (1909) is a boldly fierce and romantic work of big gestures and dark drama. The first symphony is in many ways an extension of the same language; this is music of flickering candle lights and stirring, restless shadows, and the music moves between the mysteriously and shimmering cold and the intensely restless, almost ecstatic (including a fanatical witches' dance in the scherzo), ending in a triumphant but slightly hysterical last movement. The themes, harmonic processions and formal lines aren't particularly memorable in themselves, but the music does not fail to leave an impression. The later Spring Hymn is, as the title indicates, a mellower work, but seems - maybe because of the works preceding it more than anything else - unable entirely to shake off the feeling of shadows lurking beneath the surface. Strindberg was a recurring influence on Rangström and there is a sense in which the expressionist, decadent drama seems to underlie all the works on the disc.



Volume 2: I truly love Rangström's second symphony, a dramatic, darkly heroic, urgent (even frenzied) and blatantly nationalistic work containing many interesting harmonic gestures and some truly memorable thematic material; this is music of midsummer nights in dark pine-forests, twilight, noble heroics and almost maniacal frenzy. The coupling is the orientally inspired postcard-music suite Intermezzo drammatico where the material is treated a little too heavy-handedly (composer, not performers) for the impressionistic shimmering that clearly was the intention to fully emerge.



Volume 3: The third symphony is clearly more modern than its predecessors. It is in one movement with several sections and is a marvelously inventive work (probably the best of his symphonies if not as immediately attractive as the second), intensely expressive and with a multitude of interesting instrumental and harmonic touches. With shifting atmospheres and powerful underlying surging intensity, Rangström is able to pack surprisingly much into the symphony's 22 minutes. The fourth symphony is an impressive work as well (though not quite on the same level as the third). It is a work mixing shadowy expressionism with nobility to interesting effects and makes inventive use of the organ.



The Norköping Symphony Orchestra gives fine performances under the sympathetic direction of Jurowski, although they may lack some refinement and finesse and fullness of tone in the string section. Sound quality is generally fine but a little constricted. The set is recommendable nonetheless."