This is BIS’s third installment of orchestral music by Gösta Nystroem, and I have to confess that it got lost in the shuffle when it first arrived for review. That was my mistake. Nystroem was a splendid composer, and the previous two releases both were excellent, as is this one. These two symphonies have much in common musically, including Nystroem’s habit of beginning a movement in silence, with a slowly building threnody scored principally for high strings, followed by quicker episodes. If this sounds formulaic, it’s not. First of all, Nystroem was extremely good at this sort of thing, and second, the two works are quite different in terms of structure. The Fourth Symphony has three movements and is based on incidental music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, while the Sixth and last symphony follows an original two-movement plan, each of its parts containing highly contrasting material in varying tempos.
Nystroem’s orchestration also is very colorful and effective. His evocative use of high strings to open many of his individual movements should not blind us to the fact that he was very much a composer for the whole orchestra. This means full sonorities, plentiful use of winds, brass, and percussion, and beautifully judged, fluid textures. Although there are plenty of good tunes, Nystroem was not a melodist in the conventional sense. But his basic sonorities always fall gratefully on the ear, and his driving rhythms in quicker music produce a great deal of physical excitement. In short, this is really good, solid, characterful symphonic writing, and the performances give the full measure of each work. The only possible missing ingredient might be a bit more assertiveness from the brass at the big climaxes, but I can’t imagine anyone being dissatisfied with either the interpretations or the vivid sound.
