Ture Rangstr?m: Complete Symphonies (Box Set)
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Free Music Notes for Ture Rangstr?m: Complete Symphonies (Box Set)
Free Music Review: Far better than I expected!
Hit: 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.)
Free Music Review: Swedish Hyper-Romanticism
Hit: 4 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 Alfv?n, 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 Rangstr?m (1884-1947), a proteg? of the playwright August Strindberg. While Rangstr?m 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 Rangstr?m as belonging to the school of "Swedish hyper-romanticism"? The epithet fits, whatever its origin, because of the great vital impulse in Rangstr?m'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 Rangstr?m would have known. CPO now issues its previously ?-la-carte survey of Rangstr?m'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 Norrk?ping Symphony Orchestra under Michail Jurowski, tap right into Rangstr?m'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, Rangstr?m'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 ("J?sningstid" ["Time of Struggle"] and "Legend"), both full of Dionysiac enthusiasm and ballad-like pathos, yield to two shorter movements. Rangstr?m avails himself much less of counterpoint than Alfv?n 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, V?gen, Sommarnatten" ("Wood, Wave, Summer Night"), and "Dr?mmen" ("The Dream"). Rangstr?m 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, V?gen, Sommarnatten" cultivates the same ecstasy of what the Scandinavians call "The Iron Nights" as in Alfven's "Midsommarvaka." "Dr?mmen" hearkens back to the composer's ties to Strindberg, who wrote a fantastic "Dream Play," but Rangstr?m's fantasy is energetic and without pessimism. Rangstr?m's one-movement SYMPHONY NO. 3 "S?ng under Stj?rnorna" ("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 Rangstr?m's own songs, "B?n 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. (Rangstr?m 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. Rangstr?m'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, Rangstr?m's music does surge. I recommend this set.