"Just over a decade later he would have obtained quite a different picture. There now existed a young and very enthusiastic generation of both composers and performers, and there new, fascinating works which held great promise for the future.
"Wilhelm Stenhammar's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, first performed at one of the Royal Opera symphony concerts on 17 March 1894, stands out as a gateway - or fanfare - to this new epoch in Swedish music. The soloist was the composer himself, at that time 22 years old, and the performance was conducted by Conrad Nordqvist, the Director of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera. A fortnight later the concerto was performed in Copenhagen. The success brought Stenhammar both a publisher and an agent. The door to 'the great wide world' was no opened. Before long Stenhammar was playing his concerto in Berlin, with Richard Strauss conducting, and later with Arthur Nikisch, Karl Muck, Felix Weingartner and Hans Richter. No Swedish instrumental composition had ever before attracted such widespread attention.
"The spring of 1904 found Stenhammar sketching a new piano concerto, in D minor. Completed in Florence in the spring of 1907, it became the only one of his own works which Stenhammar later performed himself. He played the B-flat minor Concerto for the last time in 1908; after that it figures only sporadically in the repertoire, and with other soloists. During the Second World War both the score and the parts - all in manuscript - were in the possession of the Hainauer publishing form in Breslau, and the entire material was destroyed during one of the air raids on the city. Only the printed short score remained.
"When this became known, Stenhammar's widow ask the composer Kurt Atterberg, who as a young man had heard the concerto several times, to orchestrate the short score. This version of the B-flat minor Concerto was performed in the spring of 1946. It was recorded in the autumn of 1977 with Irene Mannheimer as soloist together with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit.
"In the autumn of 1990, Professor Allan B. Ho of Southern Illinois University announced that he had found, in a private American collection of music, what proved to be a copy of Stenhammar's manuscript, produced for a tour of the USA by the German pianist Franz Rummel in 1898. As a result, the original classical-romantic orchestra sound can now be both listened to an studied. In comparison, Atterberg's predominantly stylish instrumentation occasionally reveals small personal touches, as if he wanted to put a signature to his own contribution.
"The B-flat minor Concerto is a work in the Brahmsian tradition, in four movements and lasting for about 47 minutes. It opens with a magnificent solo cadenz ('Molto moderato e maestoso') in a dialogue with chord from the orchestra. The broadly constructed movement which then follows ('Sostenuto e tranquillo - Animato') has a first theme which is elegiac and a second one which is enthusiastic and upward-soaring. At times the tonal language acquires symphonic proportions. The second movement - Scherzo ('Vivacissimo') - is light-hearted and buoyant, in a virtuoso style which rather puts on in mind of Saint-Saëns, a composer whose works were frequently performed in Stockholm during the 1890s. The third movement - 'Andante' - is based on a cantabile theme stated first by the horn. For most of this movement the piano simply provides an accompaniment. The final movement - 'Allegro commodo' - has a tempestuous main theme and relies very much of virtuoso effects, but towards the end these are curtailed by a ballad-like melody (on the same motif as in Stenhammar's song 'Lutad mot gärdet'). The concerto ends on a pianissimo chord.
"'Fragment from Symphony No. 3 (revised by Tommy B. Andersson)': In the mid 1910s Stenhammar had completed his two most important orchestral works: the Symphony in G minor and the Serenade in F major. These were to be his last compositions. However, between 1918 and 1919 he worked on a third symphony and there exist quite detailed outlines of a first movement - seven pages of which are in fair copy - and melodious suggestions as to an additional three movements.
"The short fragment from the work which has been recorded contains the above-mentioned seven pages. When compared with the polyphonic, almost matter-of-fact Symphony in G minor, the feeling from the outlines is of an orientation towards the romantic tone language we meet in some earlier works by Stenhammar.
"The outlines, with a concert ending by Tommy B. Andersson, were presented at a press conference in the Stockholm Concert Hall in April 1991." (Bo Wallner, 1992. From the liner notes.)
Performers: Kungliga Filharmonikerna, Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Mats Widlund
1. Piano Concerto No. 1 In B-Flat Minor: I. Molto Moderato E Maestoso - Sostenuto E Tranquillo - Animato
2. Piano Concerto No. 1 In B-Flat Minor: II. Scherzo (Vivacissimo)
3. Piano Concerto No. 1 In B-Flat Minor: III. Andante
4. Piano Concerto No. 1 In B-Flat Minor: IV. Allegro Commodo
5. Fragment From Symphony No. 3
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