Pettersson / Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra - Allan Pettersson: Symphony No. 13 - SUPER-AUDIO CD [Super Audio CD (SACD)]

The Builders and the Butchers were formed in the fall of 2005 in Portland, Oregon.  The band's first two years consisted of busking, playing house shows, and showing up unannounced anywhere around Portland where people were gathered.  Folks began to take notice and the band transitioned slowly, going from playing on the floor of venues unplugged to gradually adding a mic here, an amp there, until they organically grew into one of the most exciting live acts in the Pacific Northwest.  Even when plugged in, a cornerstone of almost every builders show is playing on the floor at some point during the set.The Builders wrote their sixth studio album Hell & High Water (Badman Recording Co.) together as a band in a boat house in the marina where bass player Willy Kunkle lives. Frontman Ryan Sollee explains further InchThrough the fall and winter of 2019, we would gather weekly, make a fire, drink beer and whisky and try to find some cohesiveness in these tunes. This gathering place was the most inspiring we have had in any creative process for any album up to that date.Inch It ended up being a stark contrast to the year that followed. After laying down the initial studio drum tracks with Dylan Badman Magierek for the album in February 2020, they worked remotely - which pushed the band way past it's usual comfort zone.

Allan Pettersson's Symphony No. 15 is characterized by a high degree of tension right from the striking opening brief, emphatic chords from horns and trombones above the tremolo of a side drum. Soon an expressive melodic subject is heard from the first violins, followed by contrasting rapid scales - at which point Pettersson has presented the greater part of the symphony's building blocks. Like so many of the composer's symphonies, the 15th is in one movement, but with clearly defined sections. It was completed in 1978, two years before Pettersson's death, and was followed in 1979, by the sixteenth symphony, the last work that the composer submitted for performance. Only later did it become known that Pettersson had also been working on a Viola Concerto - a work that, if not fully completed, was so far advanced that it has been accepted as part of his œuvre. It is presented here by the Swedish violist Ellen Nisbeth, who also performs one of Pettersson's very earliest compositions - a Fantaisie pour alto seul, dated June 1936, when the composer himself was about to embark on a career as violist. On this the tenth disc in their acclaimed Pettersson cycle, the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra and Christian Lindberg bring their combined expertise to bear on the orchestral scores.

Considered to be one of the great Nordic symphonies of it's time, Wilhelm Stenhammar's Symphony No. 2 in G minor was a long time in the making. Stenhammar the conductor and pianist was a leading figure in the musical life of Sweden and Scandinavia, but in his role as composer he struggled with self-doubt, feeling that his knowledge of musical theory was insufficient. In 1910 he decided to address this perceived shortcoming, and began an intensive study of counterpoint which included setting himself several thousand assignments over the following decade. At the same time, between 1911 and 1915, Stenhammar composed his G minor symphony, and against this background it is hardly surprising that it displays his preoccupation with counterpoint, it's final movement a grandiose double fugue. If the symphony is one of Stenhammar's most celebrated works, his music for Strindberg's A Dream Play is one of the least-known. It was composed for a production of Strindberg's existential drama in 1916, a year after the completion of the Symphony. Rarely performed after that, the music was arranged into a concert version in 1970 by Hilding Rosenberg. Christian Lindberg and the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra have previously recorded Stenhammar's Serenade to critical acclaim.