Swedish Songs and Chamber Music
Sara Wennerberg-Reuter (1875-1959)
Songs
Légende in G minor for violin and piano (1903)
Andreas Hallén (1846-1925)
Piano Quartet in D minor, Op.3 (1869-1870)
Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927)
Violin Sonata in A minor, Op.19 (1899-1890)
rec. 2024, Kulturhuset I Ytterjärna, Järna, Sweden
Swedish texts and English translations included
BIS BIS2686 SACD [73]

A tributary of Swedish romanticism can be traced in this disc, which introduces most of us to the chamber music of Andreas Hallén (1846-1925) and the songs of Sara Wennerberg-Reuter (1875-1959) as well as the best known of the trio, and Wennerberg-Reuter’s near-contemporary, Wilhelm Stenhammar.

Hallén was taught by Carl Reinecke and Josef Rheinberger and in time was to become known as a Wagnerian, as well as a leading conductor in Sweden, but his Piano Quartet was composed when he was only 23 and still audibly in thrall to early German models. Nevertheless, it’s written with confident, singable lines and crafted with skill. The moods and textures of the central movement are cleverly varied from melancholic episodes to threnodic depth and lighter, more refined paragraphs. In the finale, he unleashes his Mendelssohnian side, energetic and playful. It’s a modest, interesting work that, whilst hardly breaking new ground, shows a young composer assimilating his influences to optimum benefit.

Stenhammar’s Violin Sonata dates from much later, in 1900, and has been recorded by some illustrious modern duos like Baiba and Lauma Skride and Nils-Erik Sparf and Bengt Forsberg amongst others – both of these in the context of other Scadinavian violin works. What I particularly like about the performance under review is that Johan Dalene and Peter Friis Johansson play with perfect rapport as to the music’s elfin lyricism and that Delane phrases the barcarole rhythm of the first movement with the sweetest of tones. It’s this sense of songful restraint that makes the performance so distinctive, and successful, and Delane never over-vibrates, the better to mediate the central movement’s tendency to rather wan Edwardiana. The terpsichorean refinement of the finale finds the duo successfully traversing the music’s deft and amiable qualities. There are other, more robust ways to project this music, such as David Oistrakh showed, but Delane and Johansson are consistently impressive.

Which leads on to the songs of Sara Wennerberg-Reuter, a student of Reinecke and later Max Bruch, organist at the Sofia Church for 40 years and prolific song composer. They are the product of romantic fervour and embrace balladry, fiery declamation, folk-influenced idylls, hints of Japonaiserie, and melancholy. Some explosive elements are present in her 1905 settings and the songs here have been grouped in small batches to allow the listener to focus on their salient features. Even in the later settings, she could trip daintily and chord richly, but the selection of songs – many, incidentally, unpublished – ends with a mid-period song, set during the First World War, that is alluringly vivacious. Sofie Asplund sings warmly but astringently when required. Finally, there is a rare excursion from Wennerberg-Reuter to the violin-piano repertoire for her Légende in G minor of 1903, a well-crafted piece that moves from the lyric to the terse, cast in a bardic-rhapsodic form.

Given that Reinecke taught both Hallén and Wennerberg-Reuter and that, in turn, Hallén taught Stenhammar, there is a strong Leipzig tradition at work here, richly romantic but capable of independent musical imagination. Thus the tributary runs entertainingly here from 1870 to 1947. It’s also played with flair and charm and beautifully recorded.

Jonathan Woolf

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Contents
Wennerberg-Reuter
Songs
Landsvägsmaja (c.1904-1905)
Vallarelåt (c.1904-1905)
Tre trallande jäntor (c.1904-1905)
Når som majvindar susa (1932)
Hör, huru vindarne susa
Ett barn (1947)
Adagio (1944)
Uti vär hage (1916)

Performers
Songs: Sofie Asplund (soprano), Peter Friis Johansson (piano)
Legende: Johan Dalene (violin), Peter Friis Johansson (piano)
Hallén: Daniel Migdal (violin), Albin Uusijärvi (viola), Amalie Stalheim (cello), Peter Friis Johansson (piano)
Stenhammar: Johan Dalene (violin), Peter Friis Johansson (piano)