Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Op. 7 • Festival Overture, Op. 25
Suite from The Mountain King • Uppsala Rhapsody, Op. 24 – Swedish Rhapsody No. 2

The music of Hugo Alfvén has always been close to the hearts of the Swedish people. He is regarded as representing the spirit of the country, partly owing to his intimate knowledge of Swedish folk music. He was no narrow ‘provincial’, however, but a highly sophisticated musician who spent ten years travelling throughout Europe. Nor were his talents confined to music. He was an engaging writer and an accomplished watercolourist who once contemplated a career as a painter. Alfvén’s painterly instincts are reflected in a colourful and virtuosic flair for orchestration, which has been compared with that of Richard Strauss. Music lovers who know him best as the popular, cheerful entertainer will discover in the works recorded here a more elegiac and dramatic side: sometimes melancholy, even turbulent, but characterised, too, by a bacchanalian exuberance.

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 11 • Suite from the ballet The Prodigal Son

The idea for a ballet based on the biblical legend of The Prodigal Son was suggested to Alfvén in 1956 by the choreographer Ivo Cramér, who wanted to produce a ballet to celebrate Alfvén’s 85th birthday in 1957. The suite contains seven numbers from the score, and includes several lively Swedish polkas, typical of Alfvén’s lighter style. By contrast the massive Second Symphony, first performed with great success in 1899, was one of the first Swedish musical works to move beyond nationalism to a more international view of the world. The inspiration for this epic late-Romantic score is the sea, and the many different aspects of it which man encounters, from tranquillity to turbulence.

Symphony No. 3 in E major, Op. 23 • A Legend of the Skerries, Op. 20
Dalecarlian Rhapsody – Swedish Rhapsody No. 3

Alfvén composed his Third Symphony in Sori, just outside Genoa, where he met his future wife Marie Krøyer. Its inspiration was love – ‘it is an expression of the joy of living, an expression of the sun-lit happiness that filled my whole being’. The symphony is one of his most brilliant and harmonious creations. In contrast, the Dalecarlian Rhapsody of 1931 is nostalgic and rather sad, with the artist Alfvén depicting the lonely woods and majestic mountains north of Lake Siljan. After completing Midsommarvaka (‘Midsummer Vigil’), Alfvén created its counterpart – the emotionally charged tone poem A Legend of the Skerries. ‘My innermost self belongs to the skerries,’ he wrote. ‘I have my best ideas when sailing on dark and stormy nights.’

Symphony No. 4 in C minor, Op. 39 ‘From the Outermost Skerries’
Festival Overture, Op. 52

Although the music of Hugo Alfvén has never been widely heard internationally, in his native Sweden he is regarded as representing the spirit of the country, partly owing to his intimate knowledge of Swedish folk music. A gifted watercolourist, writer and composer, Alfvén was well equipped by ability as well as temperament to depict the unique island landscape of the Stockholm archipelago, the stated aim of his Fourth Symphony: ‘The action takes place in the skerries, where sea rages among the rocks on gloomy, stormy nights, by moonlight and in sunshine…’

Symphony No. 5 in A minor, Op. 54
Uppenbarelsekantat, Op. 31 (‘Revelation Cantata’) – Andante religioso

A gifted musician, writer and watercolourist, Hugo Alfvén is regarded in his native Sweden as the most significant composer after Berwald. The Fifth Symphony occupied Alfvén throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and draws on themes from his ambitious ballet The Mountain King. The first movement has sometimes been performed on its own, but the symphony is relatively rarely heard as a whole. The Andante religioso is Alfvén’s arrangement for harp, celesta and strings of an intermezzo from his Revelation Cantata, Op. 31.

Synnöve Solbakken Suite, Op. 50 • A Country Tale Suite, Op. 53 • Elegy, Op. 38

The music on this album consists of two suites drawn from films that Alfvén scored during the 1930s and 1940s. Both draw on folk tunes to evoke the countryside, with a mix of bucolic devices and sombre pastoral melodies. Although the films were not well received, Alfvén’s music was widely commended. In Élégie, Alfvén pays tribute to fellow countryman and composer Emil Sjögren (1853–1918), and this work anticipates his Fourth Symphony.

Swedish Orchestral Favourites