ALLAN PETTERSSON (1911-1980): Symphony No. 12 for Chorus and Orchestra “The Dead in the Square”.

Description: Pablo Neruda had received the Nobel Prize in 1971, and acknowledging the poet’s ‘deeply felt compassion for the outcasts of society’, Pettersson selected nine poems from the huge collection Canto general for his new work. As Pettersson was composing the symphony, Neruda died during the tumultuous aftermath of the military coup in Chile on 11 September 1973. The poems deal with an incident in Santiago de Chile in 1946 when six demonstrators were killed by the police during a workers’ manifestation. Pettersson, who came from a working-class background, commented on the subject matter: ‘My heart was, and is, with the poor of Chile, so like the worker in the ‘third world’ in which I grew up.’ Typically of Pettersson, the symphony is in one movement. The choral parts are highly demanding – the choir sings almost without interruption, and often very forcefully and in difficult registers. Swedish-English texts. Swedish Radio Choir, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra; Christian Lindberg.