On the path of Kurt Atterberg

Interesting post (and audio sample) on the Swedish composer Kurt Magnus Atterberg (1887-1974), seen in my header photo, from a Harvard student, musician and broadcaster and blogger.

More on those WHRB orgies here, follow my Danish thread here.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Wilhelm Stenhammar - Excelsior!

Wilhelm Stenhammar died eighty years ago today, on November 20, 1927. At the beginning of the twentieth century Swedish born Stenhammar was the pre-eminent Scandinavian composer and pianist. He played his own First Piano Concerto with the Berlin Opera Orchestra conducted by Richard Strauss and with the Hallé conducted by Hans Richter, and the Berlin Philharmonic under Arthur Nikisch performed his concert overture Excelsior! which is on the LP shown above.

From 1907 to 1922 Stenhammar was artistic leader of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra. As well as playing his own works Stenhammar performed new compositions by Strauss, Reger, Debussy, Sibelius, and Mahler in Gothenburg, and became a close friend of Carl Nielsen after programming his music. The Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra has continued to perform Stenhammar's music, and in the 1980s they recorded his two symphonies and Excelsior! under their, then, principal conductor Neeme Järvi. The recordings were made in the Gothenburg Concert Hall which is seen below, and were originally issued on the two BIS LPs seen in my header and footer images.


Gothenburg Concert Hall was built in the decade after Stenhammar's death to a modern design by architect Nils Einar Ericsson, who used red maple for the interior surfaces. This resulted in exceptional acoustics which both BIS and Deutsche Grammophon have captured on some fine recordings including Järvi's cycle of the Berwald symphonies on DG.

The sound from the BIS LPs of the Stenhammar symphonies is quite outstanding, helped by heavyweight Teldec vinyl pressings. Both recordings used just five Neumann microphones routed through a Swedish radio mixer. The First Symphony was recorded in 1982 using analogue tape and no Dolby, the Second in 1983 used an early Sony PCM-F1 digital recorder. The classic BIS album designs are by the label's founder Robert von Bahr, and the typography is by Marianne von Bahr.

These magnificent BIS recordings live on in CD format. Given the vogue for Mahler and Nielsen today it is difficult to understand why Wilhelm Stenhammar's music is not better know.


BIS has also done very fine things for the music of Antal Dorati.
Thanks to our son, who lovingly created the sleeve images using an A4 scanner! Header and footer images (c) On An Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Sweden's best kept secret - Jan Johansson

Sweden is famous for its jazz. Most recently the home grown Esbjorn Svensson Trio has become a worldwide success. Yet the best selling jazz record in Sweden was made by an artist virtually unknown outside Scandinavia, and whose records are very difficult to get hold of.

The artist is pianist Jan Johansson (photo above). The recording is Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish), and it has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Johansson was born in 1931, and met saxophonist Stan Getz while at university. He abandoned his studies to play jazz fulltime, and worked with many American jazz greats, becoming the first European ever to be invited to join "Jazz at the Philharmonic."

The years 1961 to 1968 produced a string of classic albums. These included Jazz på svenska and Jazz på Ryska (Jazz in Russia) which are available together on a single CD titled Folkvisor. Jazz in Sweden comprises variations on sixteen Swedish folk songs with George Riedel playing bass. Also worth exploring is Musik genom Fyra Sekler (Music from the Past Centuries) which is another exploration of traditional Swedish melodies using larger forces. There were also two excellent trio sets, 8 Bittar and Innertrio, which again have been issued as a single CD.

In November 1968 Jan Johansson was killed in a car crash on his way to a church concert in a church concert in Jönköping, Sweden. He was just 37.

For reasons which are very difficult to understand Jan Johansson has remained relatively unknown outside Sweden. His son, Anders Johansson, runs Heptagon Records which does an invaluable job of keeping his recordings available. But they are still surprisingly difficult to find. I bought mine from the oddly named, but very efficient CD Baby who are based in Portland, Oregon.

Here to give you a taste of what the rest of the world has been missing are eight minutes of Jan Johansson courtesy of the Heptagon Records web site:

Folkvisor (Two samples 2' 08" & 1' 41"): - -

Musik genom Fyra Sekler (3' o"): -

8 Bittar and Innertrio (1' 52"): -

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Fairytales - an album beyond words

* This article was originally published on October 3, 2005, and is reblogged here as part of On An Overgrown Path's second anniversary celebration of Music beyond borders. Follow this link to read the comments posted to the original article.

Sweden's best kept secret - Jan Johansson

Sweden is famous for its jazz. Most recently the home grown Esbjorn Svensson Trio has become a worldwide success. Yet the best selling jazz record in Sweden was made by an artist virtually unknown outside Scandinavia, and whose records are very difficult to get hold of.

The artist is pianist Jan Johansson (photo above). The recording is Jazz på svenska (Jazz in Swedish), and it has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Johansson was born in 1931, and met saxophonist Stan Getz while at university. He abandoned his studies to play jazz fulltime, and worked with many American jazz greats, becoming the first European ever to be invited to join "Jazz at the Philharmonic."

The years 1961 to 1968 produced a string of classic albums. These included Jazz på svenska and Jazz på Ryska (Jazz in Russia) which are available together on a single CD titled Folkvisor. Jazz in Sweden comprises variations on sixteen Swedish folk songs with George Riedel playing bass. Also worth exploring is Musik genom Fyra Sekler (Music from the Past Centuries) which is another exploration of traditional Swedish melodies using larger forces. There were also two excellent trio sets, 8 Bittar and Innertrio, which again have been issued as a single CD.

In November 1968 Jan Johansson was killed in a car crash on his way to a church concert in a church concert in Jönköping, Sweden. He was just 37.

For reasons which are very difficult to understand Jan Johansson has remained relatively unknown outside Sweden. His son, Anders Johansson, runs Heptagon Records which does an invaluable job of keeping his recordings available. But they are still surprisingly difficult to find. I bought mine from the oddly named, but very efficient CD Baby who are based in Portland, Oregon.

Here to give you a taste of what the rest of the world has been missing are eight minutes of Jan Johansson courtesy of the Heptagon Records web site:

Folkvisor (Two samples 2' 08" & 1' 41"): - -

Musik genom Fyra Sekler (3' o"): -

8 Bittar and Innertrio (1' 52"): -

If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Fairytales - an album beyond words