Hallberg & Dente: Orchestral Works
Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ola Karlsson, Per Engström
Dente’s themes possess strong character, and he drives the movement forward with tight construction and a good feel for drama. If there’s a model or evident influence here, I’d say it was Schumann....
Hallberg & Dente: Orchestral Works
Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Ola Karlsson, Per Engström
Purchase product
Dente’s themes possess strong character, and he drives the movement forward with tight construction and a good feel for drama. If there’s a model or evident influence here, I’d say it was Schumann....
About
Represented on this release are two Swedish composers from the late 19th century, who despite contemporary recognition usually do not count among the still enduring and current. Joseph Dente, after having taken the position as Master of the The Royal Court Orchestra, reached the highest rank a composer could then get in Sweden, when he in 1882 became teacher in composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. In the case of Bengt Wilhelm Hallberg it was certainly quite simply his daily activities in the “small town” Landskrona (in the southern province Skane) – he was not visible from the out-look of Stockholm, where “everything happened”, and a few occasional successes in Copenhagen did not give any greater reputation further north. But above all, the opportunities to get their music noticed, performed and printed were extremely limited, particularly for those composers who wanted to write orchestral and chamber music – still there was only one single professional orchestra in Sweden, The Royal Court Orchestra. It is therefore hardly surprising that composers in symphonic format were comparatively few; both Hallberg and Dente remained “non-recurrent symphonists”.
Contents and tracklist
- Malmö Symphony Orchestra
- Per Engström
- Malmö Symphony Orchestra
- Per Engström
- Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra
- Ola Karlsson
Awards and reviews
March/April 2020
Dente’s themes possess strong character, and he drives the movement forward with tight construction and a good feel for drama. If there’s a model or evident influence here, I’d say it was Schumann. This is a great symphony, worthy of a place beside any of the great Romantic symphonies of the late 19th century. For the Dente, an urgent recommendation.
July 2019
The liner-notes are entrusted to the veteran hands and sagacious judgement of Lennart Hedwall. They do not disappoint and are all the more significant with a disc presenting two composers airlifted out of the bleakest of obscurity.