Violin Concerto / Varmlands Rhapsody

"Frankly, there is little that is less than superlative to be said of Atterberg's music, and I am thrilled to see that it is gaining a wider audience, if only through the medium of recordings. Now, let's see if we can get a few of our woefully conservative symphony orchestras here in the U.S. wake up and discover that composers other than Beethoven and Brahms turned out some splendid and dare I say it, accessible music. Any listener who would not be pleased by this superb music should take the next available appointment for a hearing examination. This is a disc not to be missed"
(Recording of the Month MusicWeb May 2006)

"Some critics have lambasted Kurt Atterberg (1887-1974) for being an arch-conservative composer. But the situation in Sweden during his lifetime allowed for that largely because the disruptions of World War I, which led other European composers to look for compositional approaches that reflected its ensuing disharmony, did not really affect Sweden all that much. Be that as it may, music by Atterberg is indeed quite romantic in thrust although he continued to hew to classical forms throughout his career, stating that he had never composed 'a formless mood piece.' In this sense he was a post-Brahmsian although his harmonic model was probably closer to the methods used by Richard Strauss.

The CPO label has been slowly adding to its valuable revelatory series of orchestral music by this Swedish master. All the symphonies have been recorded, as has the piano concerto and the tone poem, Älven (The River). Here we have his only violin concerto, coupled with two orchestral pieces, the Värmland Rhapsody and the early Overture in A Minor. Easiest on the ear, and unfailingly luscious in its orchestration and harmonies, is the Värmland Rhapsody, Op. 36. It was commissioned for the celebration of the 75th birthday of Swedish Nobel-prizewinning writer Selma Lagerlof, who had written extensively of Värmland, a west-central province of Sweden. Although the Rhapsody does not follow a narrative line, its broad flowing, expansive melodies reflect in some way the landscape of the region. Atterberg uses a popular Värmland folksong as one of the main themes of the work. The Overture in A Minor, Op. 4, (from 1912 but revised in 1933) , was written at the same time Atterberg was graduating with his degree in electrical engineering. (He spent his entire professional life in the Swedish office of patents, retiring only when he was eighty-one!) It is less immediately engaging but repeated listening helps one hear and appreciate his expert manipulation of an altered sonata-allegro form.

The Violin Concerto in B Minor is in the usual three movements. It starts unusually with the unaccompanied violin intoning the movement's (and indeed the concerto's) elegiac main theme. The overall construction of the concerto is an arch form tied together by the alteration throughout of that main theme. It recurs in the melancholy and haunting middle movement. It also figures in the lively rondo finale in whose final peroration it reappears in its earliest form, bringing the work to a satisying close. Ulf Wallin, the Swedish violinist possibly best known for his chamber music performances and his championing of new music, is a persuasive soloist. The Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, under German conductor Roger Epple, are in fine form.

This is a worthy addition to the growing Atterberg discography for which we can thank CPO. One hopes we can look forward to recordings of the cello concerto and the double concerto for violin and cello."
(Amazon.co.uk)