SVEN-DAVID SANDSTRÖM (b.1942): Flute Concerto, Lonesome for Guitar and Orchestra, Cello Concerto.

Catalogue Number: 11M090
Label: Caprice
Reference: CAP 21418
Format: CD
Price: $17.98
Description: These concerti chart aspects of the development of this very individual composer's style during the 1980s. All, characteristically, draw on a wide range of techniques, seamlessly dovetailed together; and all explore the psychological implications of the confrontation between a solitary individual and a large, heterogeneous group. The 1980 flute concerto is formidably virtuosic, with an almost incessant, and toward the end, increasingly frantic, highly active flute part increasingly at odds with an aggressive ensemble. The music is austere, spiky, far less romantically tonal than the composer's recent works, though not without tonal references. Lonesome (1983) presents its argument about the position of the solitary human being in modern society - impotent and hopeless, basically, according to the composer - by adopting a novel approach to the perennial problem of balancing an acoustic guitar with a symphony orchestra; the soloist is permitted eloquent, poetic utterances with subtle interactions with individuals within the crowd, but when the orchestra starts to function as an entity it goes its own way - ponderous and magnificent to be sure, and utterly oblivious to the protestations of the increasingly overwhelmed individual. 1988's expansive cello concerto is even more a modern take on the Romantic concerto, with the increasing tendency toward tonality far more fully developed, in 13 contrasting 'scenes'. Here the melancholy solo line is more sympathetically accompanied and reinforced by the orchestral forces, in a warm, predominantly tonal idiom with recurring hints of disturbing undercurrents in the depths. Tobias Carron (flute), Magnus Andersson (guitar), Torleif Thedéen (cello), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Leif Segerstam. Original 1994 release.