Kurt Atterberg Jarvi

The final volume in our Atterberg series with Neeme Järvi and his Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra is finally out. Recorded on SACD like most of the previous ones, it features two late, again rarely performed symphonies.
The seventh, featured here in its final, three-movement form, was written in 1942, fourteen years after its famous predecessor, the Dollar Symphony. Originally in four movements, the work was received dismissively by the critics, and only acquired its final shape in 1969, when Atterberg decided to tear out the last movement from the original score (it became Vittorioso, see Vol. 4). In response to what he regarded as a critical insult, he also decided to baptise the work Sinfonia romantica, just to infuriate the modernistically inclined critics even further….

Neeme Järvi, with his children now as rivals, remains a busy star on the international conducting scene. Born in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, on June 7,1937, and brought up within the USSR's system for developing musical talent, Järvi studied percussion and conducting at the Tallinn Music School. He made his debut as a conductor at age 18. From 1955 to 1960 he pursued further studies at the Leningrad Conservatory, where his principal teachers were Nikolaï Rabinovich and Yevgeny Mravinsky.

The warm and tuneful music of Atterberg – one of Sweden’s leading composers in the twentieth century – meets the idiomatic spirit and commitment of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra conducted by Neeme Jarvi, for volume four in this series. The third of his nine symphonies, featured here, is a set of three ‘West Coast Pictures’. These contrasted movements (‘Summer Haze’, ‘Storm’, and ‘Summer Night’) were inspired by the atmosphere and landscape of the archipelago on the Swedish west coast and written between 1914 and 1916.