Allan Pettersson
Gustaf Allan Pettersson[needs IPA] (19 September 1911 – 20 June 1980) was a Swedish composer and violist.
He is considered one of the 20th century's most important Swedish composers and was described as one of the last great symphonists, often compared to Gustav Mahler.
In the final decade of his life, his symphonies (typically one-movement works) developed an international following, particularly in Germany and Sweden.
[9] His father, Karl Viktor Pettersson (1875–1952),[10][11] was a violent, alcoholic blacksmith,[12] and his mother, Ida Paulina (née Svenson) (1876–1960), was a dressmaker.
[10][11] Pettersson was born at Granhammar manor in Västra Ryd parish in the Uppland province of Sweden.
[15]With his parents and siblings, Pettersson lived in a damp, one-room basement apartment with bars on the window.
[12][16] When he was 10, he bought a cheap violin with money he earned from selling Christmas cards[13] and taught himself to play it.
[17] Through strict self-discipline and with the help of music, Pettersson freed himself from his social misery and difficult family circumstances.
[19][10] He later made two unsuccessful attempts to enter the Royal Swedish Academy of Music's conservatory.
[8] At the beginning of World War II, he was in Paris, studying the viola with the French violist Maurice Vieux.
[10][24] In September 1951, Pettersson went to Paris to study composition and was a student of composers René Leibowitz, Arthur Honegger, Olivier Messiaen, and Darius Milhaud.
[4]: 7 The conductors Antal Doráti and Sergiu Comissiona premiered and made first recordings of several of Pettersson's symphonies and contributed to his rise to fame during the 1970s.
[37] He recovered, but rheumatoid arthritis confined him most of the time to his fourth-floor apartment in a building with no elevator.
[b][39][40][12] In 1975, after a dispute about a change in a concert program for an American tour, the Stockholm Philharmonic was forbidden to perform works by Pettersson "for all time".
[43][40] He began writing his seventeenth symphony, but died, at age 68,[44] in Stockholm's Maria Magdalena parish before finishing it.
[45][46][8] Pettersson's music can be compared to Mahler's symphonic output, especially in the magnificent design and the passion and dynamism.
Overwhelmingly serious in tone, often dissonant, his music rises to ferocious climaxes, relieved, especially in his later works, by lyrical oases ("lyrische Inseln").
This work has been recorded in a performing version prepared by trombonist and conductor Christian Lindberg in 2011.
12 for mixed chorus and orchestra (1973–1974) to poems by Literature Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda with contemporary relevance[e] and the cantata Vox Humana (1974) on texts by Latin American poets.
16 (1979) which features a bravura solo part for alto saxophone commissioned by American saxophonist Frederick L. Hemke,[73] and an incomplete, posthumously discovered concerto for viola and orchestra (1979–1980).
A 12-CD pack of the Complete Symphonies of Allan Pettersson has been produced by CPO (Classic Produktion Osnabrück) based on recordings of 1984, 1988, 1991–1995, 2004.
