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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

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This release includes a digital booklet

Stream now lossless, 44.1 kHz, 16 bit
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

I. Allegro
Track length5:34
II. Menuetto scherzando
Track length5:12
III. Adagio
Track length4:49
IV. Scherzando e molto vivace
Track length8:11
I. Andante - Allegro ma non troppo
Track length7:19
II. Scherzo: Molto vivace e con brio
Track length3:53
III. Andante
Track length7:00
IV. Allegro vivace
Track length5:23

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.
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