Berg Nathanael: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5

"Quite nice stuff, carry on!" said Richard Strauss when his admirer Natanael Berg presented him with some creations in Dresden in 1909. The then just thirty-year-old vet did not need to be told twice, continued and became one of the most distinctive composer personalities of his Swedish homeland, alongside Ture Rangström, Kurt Atterberg and Hugo Alfvén. In addition to about half a dozen operas, some ballet music and vocal works with orchestra, as well as various impressive tone poems, it is above all the five symphonies with which the artist, who loved to philosophize creatively, won a place in music history: These creations almost always deal with the deepest questions of existence of man and humanity, and his glowing, colorful scores are correspondingly complex. This third album in the cpo series presents the last two symphonies of the composer, who was also quite capable of working with a light brushstroke. The fourth symphony ("Pezzo sinfonico") is a concise, transparent "symphonic piece", which was preceded by a bet with Kurt Atterberg: After the Swedish critics had often been offended by the grandiosity of both their works, they wanted to show how it could be done differently! Both Atterberg and Berg succeeded in their attempt - who then, of course, in his fifth symphony again mused in a captivating way on the great themes of life such as love, hate, struggle and forgiveness.