The Swedish Violin

As opposed to how modest the production of cello music was in Sweden before the 20th century, Swedish composers seem to have been smitten by the violin’s brilliant sound and endless technical possibilities quite early on. As early as during the baroque era, many violin concertos and solo pieces were written, especially by Sweden’s “classical music sire” Johan Helmich Roman, but also several other composers.

Perhaps this can partly be explained by the fiddle’s continuously strong position within Swedish folk music, where it has been an inherent and popular feature ever since the instrument’s rise during the late renaissance and early baroque periods, until today.

However, just as it was for the cello, the 20th century was when the real explosion of Swedish art music for violin happened, and there are hardly any of the established Swedish composers of the era that didn’t write violin concertos, sonatas, tone poems, and diverse chamber music for violin. A helpful factor in this was of course that Sweden both fostered, and attracted from abroad, a great number of eminent violinists over the years.

On these recordings you’ll hear, among others, violinists Karl-Ove Mannberg, Ida Haendel, and Bernt Lysell, conductors Herbert Blomstedt, Stig Westerberg, and Jorma Panula, as well as the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Stockholm Sinfonietta.