All but two of Allan Pettersson’s 17 symphonies have been recorded, and some are available in more than one version. The Barefoot Songs precede the symphonies and were composed during the war, between 1943 and 1945, at a time when Pettersson was earning his living as a violist in the Konsertforenings Orchestra (now the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic). This was during the period of his studies with Karl-Birger Blomdahl and several years before he went to Paris to work with Honegger and Rene Leibowitz. The pieces are not new to the catalogue but were recorded in the days of LP by Erki Saeden and Margot Rodin for Swedish Society Discofil. Saeden also recorded some of them with Dorati in the latter’s orchestration. They are 24 in all and the present CD also includes his only other contribution to the genre, the Six Songs of 1935, written in his mid-twenties. They are of an extreme, almost artless simplicity, strophic and somewhat uniform in character and approach. In his note Andreas Meyer writes, “the simple melodiousness of the cycle captures more the tone of the strophic folk song than of the art song”. Most of them are two minutes or under and short-breathed, a far cry from those distinctly long-breathed symphonies. They are expertly sung by Monica Groop, partnered here by that fine musician Cord Garben, and I doubt whether they could enjoy better advocacy. The ideas are simple to the point of naivete and I have to say that for the most part I find their charms eminently resistible and the melodies obstinately unmemorable. Others may feel differently, of course, and Pettersson aficionados can invest in them with confidence.'