Allan Pettersson / Symphony 12

Pettersson began sketching his first string concerto in 1949, before he started his composition studies in Paris. In the concerto he uses the same sort of rhythmic sounds one hears in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, a work that, in 1949, had not yet been performed in Sweden. The string concerto anticipates the sounds of compact ”clusters” that Ligeti and Penderecki later used in the 1960s.

Symfoni nr. 12 “De Döda På Torget”, for mixed choir and orchestra, is built upon the Chilean poet, Pablo Naruda’s poem of the same name. The poem concerns concrete events; outbreaks of oppression, cruelty, and brutality. As in earlier symphonies, Allan Pettersson builds his work in one long, single movement, which is almost an hour long. The music is intense, highly charged, and intensely involved.