Stenhammar, Wilhelm

Preface

Wilhelm Stenhammar

Symfoni, op. 34
(1911-15)

(b. Stockholm, 7 February 1871 — d. Stockholm, 20 November 1927)

I Allegro energico
II Andante
III Scherzo. Allegro ma non troppo presto
IV Finale. Sostenuto; Allegro vivace; Tranquillamente; Allegro ma non troppo

Preface
Few composers of his time came from such a pronouncedly musical family as (Carl) Wilhelm (Eugen) Stenhammar. His father, Per Ulrik Stenhammar (1828-75), an architect by profession, composed songs and sacred choral works, was active as a pianist and organist, and even became a member of the Royal Musical Academy. Per Ulrik’s composition teacher, Adolf Fredrik Lindblad (1801-78), also happened to be his uncle. Oskar Fredrik Stenhammer, Per Ulrik’s brother and Wilhelm’s uncle, was an opera singer, as was his wife, Fredrika (Andrée) Stenhammar (1836-80). Their daughter Elsa Elfrida Marguerite Stenhammar (1866-1960) was a choral director, instructor of music theory, organist, and singer as well. It should hardly surprise that as a child Wilhelm composed, played piano, and sang in a chorus that also included his siblings and children from his parents’ circle of friends. Perhaps because of his intensive occupation with music in his early years, Wilhelm was able to largely forgo formal msuical training. He studied piano and music theory privately under various teachers in Stockholm and Berlin, but the Stenhammar specialist Bo Wallner maintains that as a composer and conductor he was self-taught.

Wilhelm Stenhammar’s first musical breakthrough was simultaneously as a pianist and composer, with the premiere of his First Piano Concerto in 1894. Around this time he also began an artistic collaboration with the Aulin Quartet that lasted for many years. In 1897 he made his first appearance as a conductor in a performance of his concert overture Excelsior! Thus began his life as a conductor, which lasted almost up to his death: first as conductor of the Stockholm Philharmonic (1897-1900), then as conductor of the Royal Opera (1900-01), the New Philharmonic Society (1904-06), the Gothenburg Orchestral Society (1906-22), and again the Royal Opera (1924-25). In Gothenburg he saw to the increased reputation and quality of the Orchestral Society’s musical activity, gave first Swedish performances of many works of the first rank by foreign composers (among them Debussy, Reger, Richard Strauss, and Mahler), and invited his friends Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen to festival performances of their works.
In his mammoth three-volume work Wilhelm Stenhammar och hans tid (Stockholm, 1991) Bo Wallner divides Stenhammar’s compositions into three periods. The first works are of a piece with Scandinavian late romanticism, with the strong influence of Brahms and especially Wagner. The works of the second period, from about 1900 on, betray a much deeper interest in such technical means as motivic development and competing tonalities. References to works and style characteristics of earlier times (especially to those of Beethoven) and of impressionism as well, often juxtaposed within the same work, occur frequently. Characteristic works form this period include the Third and Fourth String Quartets, the Second Piano Concerto and the cantata Ett folk. The last period was induced around 1909 by the beginning of a study of counterpoint that lasted several years; the works of this period are characterized by a freedom of individual voices surpassing that in his previous works, a lightness of orchestral texture, and a mitigation of the demands of tonality by the primacy of contrapuntal unfolding. Among the main works of Stenhammar’s maturity are the last two string quartets, the Serenade, op. 31, and the present work, the Symfoni, op. 34.

Nowadays the Symfoni, op. 34 is designated as Stenhammar’s Symphony no. 2. This has its justification, because indeed Stenhammar had composed a symphony in F major twelve years earlier, which he withdrew shortly after its premiere. The reason for this probably has to do with his encounter with the Second Symphony of Jean Sibelius — next to this work, which he considered pathbreaking, his own work, strongly influenced by Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms, must have seemed immature to him. He must have also found some sense of direction in the First Symphony of his friend Carl Nielsen, a work he conducted shortly before beginning his own Symfoni, op. 34. According to a notation of the composer’s, he wrote down «a few motives» in the Villa Borghese in Rome during a trip to Italy he undertook in 1911 to restore his health. He composed the first movement in summer 1912, and the other three in 1914-15, all in Mellanklef and Gothenburg; the autograph score bears the cate 15 April 1915. The premiere took place exactly a week later, on 22 April 1915, at the Swedish Music Festival in Gothenburg. The dedicatee of the work, the Gothenburg Orchestral Society — performed under the baton of the composer. The Symfoni, op. 34 was soon regarded as one of the most important Swedish compositions up to that time, and was performed several times in the following years; however, it never established a firm footing outside of Sweden. This is regrettable, because the work is not only one of Stenhammar’s best, but it also marks an important stage in the separation of Scandinavian music from German models and styles. In several ways Stenhammar turns his back on German romanticism: The orchestral writing is strict, clear — often called «ascetic», although the work hardly lacks for color and drama! — and particularly in the outer movements decidedly polyphonic; instead of a chromatically inflected major or minor tonality, Stenhammar allows the Dorian mode to dominate. (Granted, there are notable exceptions, for instance the frequent leading tones at the end of the first movement, and the impressionistic whole-tone figures in the middle section of the Scherzo.) The thematic material is strongly reminiscent of Swedish folk music without actual quotation.
The score was published by Abraham Hirsch in Stockholm in 1916; a study score was published only many years later, in 1952, by the Stockholm publisher Carl Gehrmann. The Symfoni op. 34 may well be the most recorded of Stenhammar’s major works. Even in the 78-rpm era it was recorded once: by the Gothenburg Radio Orchestra conducted by Sixten Eckerberg. In the LP/CD era it has been recorded several times: by Tor Mann and the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (1959: RCA LM and LSC 9854, LP; Swedish Society Discofil SLT 33198, LP; und SCD 1014, CD); by Stig Westerberg and the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (1979; Caprice CAP 1151, LP; CAP 21151, CD); twice by Neeme Järvi and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (1985: BIS LP 251, BIS CD 251, und BIS CD 714-16; 1993: Deutsche Grammophon 445 857-2); by Paavo Järvi and the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (1996, Virgin 45244), und by Petter Sundkvist and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra (1996, Naxos 8.553888).

Stephen Luttmann, 2007

For performance material please contact Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm. Reprint of a copy from the collection Christoph Schlüren, Munich.