Hilding Rosenberg - Piano Music, Vol. 2 (Widlund)

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Hilding Rosenberg - Piano Music, Vol. 2 (Widlund)

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In relation to my discovery of Rosenberg I owe a debt, deep and wide, to my favourite writer on Scandinavian music, Robert Layton. It was through Mr Layton's writings in 'Golden Age' Gramophone rather than its current thought-byte style Brummagem tin - no disrespect to my native Birmingham) that I sought out Rosenberg's music in the 1970s and 1980s. We can enjoy reading classic Layton (and I hope, both Martin Anderson and the much-missed Richard D.C. Noble - the latter once such a pillar of Records and Recordings) in the newly launched International Record Review.
One day I hope to have the excuse to review the Rosenberg Symphonies - especially the middle period ones: 3 (1939, The Four Ages of Man, after Romain Rolland), No. 4 Johannes Uppenbarelse (1940, his Revelation of St John - Apocalypse symphony - written four years after Franz Schmidt's Book of the Seven Seals in the year of the German occupation of Norway and Denmark) and No. 5 Hortulanus (1944).
Of the Fourth Symphony I treasure both the Caprice CD (CAP21429) with Gothenburg forces conducted by Sixten Ehrling with Håkon Hagegård as well as a radio tape (1979 BBC broadcast) of a performance conducted by Herbert Blomstedt (has he ever been permitted to do No. 4 - or any Rosenberg - in San Francisco I wonder?) with Swedish Radio forces and again with Hagegård as the baritone soloist.
There is some extremely attractive music on this disc. While the two sonatas can be a challenge the other works here are immediately amicable without being anodyne.
The Gallic impressionism Suite: Delicately tuneful miniature chiming impressionism of Arabesk and Pastoral, Pierrot wanderings of Impromptu. Nothing Schoenbergian here. Prize listening for anyone partial to Ravel or Goossens
The polished Satie-like scattiness and repose of the second sonata is not to be preferred to the fourth sonata. The latter, in the first movement, rests moored at ease on an unthreateningly rocking ocean - even slightly Brahmsian. This is succeeded by an earnest perpetuum mobile and a classic andantino ruffled by breezes predictive of Shostakovich - or at least so they sound. 1927 is far too early for any direct influence.
On into the 1940s. The Theme and Variations entrancingly threads delicate silken lines into a glistening impressionistic curtain soon to be developed in angry turbulence, impatience and drizzled peace. Shostakovich is certainly a glassy influence in the 1949 Sonatina (its Allegretto rather like parts of Niels-Viggo Bentzon's Det Tempererede Klaver on ClassicO CLASS CD 210-225).
The playing time is very generous. Notes are good though silent on Sonata No. 4.

Rob Barnett @ musicweb-international.com