Stenhammar consciously strove to fashion his Second Symphony (1915) in a ‘sober’, distinctively Nordic style that’s spiritually far removed from the contemporaneous Serenade – and with good reason, as the latter was inspired by a visit to Florence and meant as a Northerner’s paean to the sunny South. I find the Serenade utterly irresistible – it’s surely the most easily lovable of all Stenhammar’s works – but the Symphony moves me a great deal more.

Christian Lindberg’s recording of the Serenade (BIS, 8/14) is highly enjoyable but his account of the Second Symphony (with the same orchestra, now renamed) is finer still. This is not the kind of piece that ‘plays itself’, either. Take the lyrical first movement, marked Allegro energico: Stig Westerberg, in what has until now been my touchstone on disc (Caprice, 4/80), lights a fire in music that can seem deceptively cool on its surface, despite taking a tempo that feels closer to Allegro moderato; Lindberg’s version doesn’t burn quite so hot but moves with the sense of urgency I believe Stenhammar had in mind. The Andante lilts, the Scherzo swings, and he wisely keeps the busy contrapuntal finale bustling along – except for the central tranquillamente (at 5'30"), played so broadly and with such exquisite tenderness it feels as if time suddenly stopped. Indeed, framed in this way, this small section becomes the symphony’s emotional core: an oasis of pure, cleansing, cantabile polyphony, like one has stepped from the clamour of a city street into the serenity of a chapel.

Hilding Rosenberg’s concert version of the incidental music for Strindberg’s A Dream Play (1916) has been recorded previously (Sterling, A/02) but with a good five minutes’ worth of Swedish dialogue. Here, without the text, its enigmatic character is more pronounced. Some of the music sounds as if it were meant to remain in the background but there are moments that leap out, like the eerie cawing of the violins behind radiant woodwinds at the end – a bit of tone-painting that looks a half-century ahead to the film scores of Bernard Herrmann. A glorious release. Don’t miss it.