Nowadays there is surely no doubt of Stenhammar's standing as without question the most important Swedish composer after Berwald. Mind you, when I lived in Sweden in the mid-1950s you wouldn't have known it. He was undergoing a neglect comparable with that of Bax and Elgar in England (I recall hearing only one work being given in public, the Second Symphony, during that period.) Now Bo Wallner has published a three-volume biography, rich in detail and documentation (almost 2,000 pages) which, considering that Jerrold Northrop Moore encompasses Elgar and Jean-Michel Nectoux Faure between one set of covers, shows that things have now almost gone to the other extreme! The First Piano Concerto comes from 1893, when Stenhammar was 22, a year after he had made his triumphant pianistic debut in Stockholm with the Brahms D minor Concerto. Such was its success during the 1890s that he was invited to play it with the Berlin Philharmonic under Richard Strauss. He toured the concerto, playing it several times not only in Berlin but Copenhagen, Leipzig, Dresden and Manchester (under Hans Richter). In time, however, he grew tired of the concerto and became careless as to its fate. On every occasion he played it, what we have hitherto thought of as the only copy of the score and parts was despatched from Breslau by his German publisher and then returned, and even when the parts once went astray after a performance (they eventually turned up in Norway), Stenhammar made no special effort to have a copy made. Both the autograph and the orchestral parts were destroyed during the Second World War but the piano score and a short score survived, and Kurt Atterburg, who had heard Stenhammar play the work several times, reconstructed the orchestral part from memory. It was his version which Irene Mannheimer recorded with the Gothenburg Orchestra and Charles Dutoit (Sterling (CD) CDS1004-2, 7/90). Then, as he explains in his excellent note to the BIS recording, Dr Allen Ho discovered a copy of the full score in the Library of Congress. It had apparently been bought from a second-hand dealer in Berlin in 1904, and had probably been made for the American premiere. In general the scoring is thicker, more Germanic and the wind and brass more active than in the Atterberg reconstruction.
Now two recordings appear at the same time, both so good that I am hard put to choose between them. Chandos offer the fragment from the Symphony No. 3 in C, on which Stenhammar embarked in 1918-19, prepared by Tommy Andersson, while BIS give us more substantial fare in the form of the Two Sentimental Romances, Op. 28, and Florez och Blanzeflor. Both CDs are very well played and recorded, though the BIS might make the better choice for those who have relatively little Stenhammar in their collections. Ulf Wallin gives very good performances of the charming Sentimental Romances and although in Florez och Blanzeflor, the young Peter Mattei could perhaps have had greater colour and dynamic range, he has excellent timbre and much tonal beauty. Jarvi fils conducts with great sympathy and sensitivity.
According to Wallner the surviving sketches show that the Stenhammar planned a four-movement symphony, and in the three-and-a-half minutes offered here (seven pages exist in Stenhammar's own score), one has a clue why he perhaps chose not to pursue the work. True, there is a sturdy and exhilarating opening, and some characteristic touches elsewhere, but some other ideas (including the fanfare figures) do not cohere in a fully convincing way. In itself it would not be enough to persuade me to buy this version. However, I have to say that for those who have alternative versions of the other works and are solely concerned with the First Concerto, which has much charm, Mats Widlund and Rozhdestvensky would be my first choice.
The Chandos recording has slightly greater depth and warmth—not that the BIS is anything other than excellent—the strings of the Stockholm Orchestra have greater richness of sonority—and Mats Widlund brings just that little bit more colour and subtlety to the solo part. At not much under 50 minutes, it is perhaps overlong but there is much to admire and enjoy in Widlund's hands. No one investing in Love Derwinger's splendid account will, however, be disappointed and both CDs can be recommended.'