The 10 best Scandinavian symphonists (who aren't Sibelius or Nielsen)

Sibelius and Nielsen may be dominating London’s concert halls this year, not least with Simon Rattle’s Sibelius symphony cycle, but there are many other Scandinavian composers well worth hearing. Here’s our top ten

It’s not just Sibelius and Nielsen - even if the Barbican Centre in London, just as an example, is stuffed with them at the moment: Sibelius this week as Simon Rattle conducts a complete symphonic cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic, and Nielsen as Sakari Oramo continues his season-long Nielsen cycle. There are plenty of other Scandinavian symphonists worth celebrating, even if they don’t have the numerical advantage of an especially auspicious anniversary this year (both Sibelius and Nielsen were born exactly 150 years ago). So here’s my selection of 10 other Scandowegian symphonists of the 21st, 20th, and 19th centuries to get your ears stuck into!

1. The progenitor of the Swedish symphony, Franz Berwald’s four works in the genre are among the mid-19th century’s most satisfying essays – and also among the most neglected on concert programmes.

2. But at least Berwald’s works aren’t as forgotten by orchestras all over the world as much as the Swede Wilhelm Stenhammar’s two completed symphonies. Roughly contemporary with Sibelius and Nielsen, Stenhammar’s symphonies show another, less progressive, more luxuriantly romantic side to early 20th-century Scandinavian symphonism.

3. Allan Pettersson’s 16 completed symphonies are arguably the most important symphonic canon in Swedish music. Their musical world of highly charged expressionism and emotional darkness, combined with a rare structural power, makes them important for the story of the symphony in the 20th century as a whole.

4. In Denmark, it’s all about successors to Nielsen, both continuing his legacy, sidestepping his influence, or continuing on completely new paths. Vagn Holmboe’s hard-edged classicism arguably does all three, in his catalogue of 13 symphonies.

5. But you won’t find much of a direct lineage from Nielsen in Per Nørgård’s eight symphonies (so far): his is among the most distinctive and diverse canons of symphonies – and of ideas of what a symphony could and should be – of any living composer.

6. Moving to Finland, the legacy of Sibelius is, if anything, even more of a feature in the musical landscape for composers in his wake to negotiate. But somehow, they all have to deal with him: Einojohani Rautavaara’snine symphonies are some of the most eloquently and searchingly successful post-Sibelian works of any living Finnish composer.

7. Ten years younger than Rautavaara, Paavo Heininen’s five symphonies (again, so far) chart a different terrain, engaging with aspects of modernism – fracture, dissonance, and avant-gardism – as well as consonance and continuity.

8. Kalevi Aho is yet another living Finnish composer with a hugely impressive symphonic catalogue: 16 symphonies and counting, traversing a range from post-Shostakovichian drama to quasi-filmic imaginarium.

9. Joonas Kokkonen’s four symphonies are an important musical bridge between Sibelius and the contemporary Finns (born in 1921, he died in 1996); but they are significant and individual works in their own right: hear the fourth to see what I mean.

10. But if it’s sheer numbers you’re after, none of the above can touch - and indeed, no other composer in history comes near - the unstoppable symphonic generator that is Finland’s Leif Segerstam, who, as of 2014, has written 285 symphonies. And counting. Ooh, there’s another one! Almost certainly…

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKWlqLake9OopKydoqu2pLHBpaagZ2JlfnZ7xZ6ZaGlhZH5xedKcmKecmaOut7XAp2SssZ2ltbC6yKyrrGWepMFuv8ibnKWhpah6r7XEpaqepg%3D%3D