Allan Pettersson: Symphony No. 12, 'The Dead in the Square'

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The choirs are excellent, having lived with this music now for a few years. The men’s voices emerging from the orchestral soundscape in the first poem sound quite magical...It is indeed a powerful... — Fanfare, July/August 2021 More…

Release Date: 29th Jan 2021
Catalogue No: BIS2450
Label: BIS
Length: 55 minutes

International Classical Music Awards

2022

Nominated - Symphonic Music

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Pettersson: Symphony No. 12, De Döda på torget (The Dead of the Square)

Work length55:36

$10.50

$16.85

$22.75

Swedish Radio Choir, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra
Christian Lindberg

The Dead in the Square

Track length10:53

$1.50

$3.85

$5.25

The Massacre

Track length8:23

$1.50

$2.60

$3.50

The Men of Nitrate

Track length5:19

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Death

Track length4:44

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

How the Flags Were Born

Track length1:21

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

I Call on Them

Track length5:46

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

The Enemies

Track length6:50

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Here They Are

Track length3:16

$1.00

$1.30

$1.75

Always

Track length9:04

$1.50

$2.60

$3.50

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In more ways than one, the Twelfth Symphony forms an exception in Allan Pettersson’s output. When he agreed to compose a work for the 500th anniversary of Uppsala University, it was one of the few commissions that he ever accepted. And what’s more, he now – after having written purely orchestral scores for the past 30 years – decided to incorporate a choir and a text. Pablo Neruda had received the Nobel Prize in 1971, and acknowledging the poet’s ‘deeply felt compassion for the outcasts of society’, Pettersson selected nine poems from the huge collection Canto general for his new work. The poems deal with an incident in Santiago de Chile in 1946 when six demonstrators were killed by the police during a workers’ manifestation. Pettersson, who came from a working-class background, commented on the subject matter: ‘My heart was, and is, with the poor of Chile, so like the worker in the ‘third world’ in which I grew up.’ But even though Symphony No. 12 includes both text and singing, it was never a question of it turning into anything other than a true ‘Pettersson symphony’ – like so many of its predecessors it is in one movement, and the composer considered the words to be ‘part of a purely symphonic context’. The Swedish Radio Choir and Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, two of Sweden’s finest choirs, have combined their forces for this recording and join the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Christian Lindberg on the latest instalment in the team’s acclaimed Pettersson cycle.

Reviews

July/August 2021

The choirs are excellent, having lived with this music now for a few years. The men’s voices emerging from the orchestral soundscape in the first poem sound quite magical...It is indeed a powerful choral symphony, and Lindberg’s is now the recording of choice.

February 2021

The Swedish Radio and Eric Ericson Chamber Choirs are no strangers to Pettersson’s idiom, having figured in earlier recordings. Lindberg’s is now the third Twelfth to appear, the best-recorded of them and, I think, the best-sung, magnificently supported by the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra...A fabulous account of a remarkable work.

Allan Pettersson: Symphony No. 12, 'The Dead in the Square'

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