Orchestral Works, Vol. 2

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Bo Linde was a promising Swedish composer, based for most of his professional life in Gävle, reckoned as a member of a group known as "50-talisterna" -- belonging to the 1950s -- Swedish composers that looked back to the 1930s, and to neo-classicism, for inspiration. Beginning as a child prodigy at the piano, Linde decided in early adulthood to devote himself to composition. He worked closely with the Gävle County Orchestra -- the predecessor to the modern-day Gävle Symphony, heard here under Petter Sundkvist -- wrote music criticism and produced a small but tidy number of works notable for their spontaneity, humor, and popular appeal. In 1970, Bo Linde inexplicably committed suicide at the age of 37, robbing Sweden of his own prodigious gifts.
This Swedish Society disc is called Bo Linde: Orchestral Works Vol. 2, which might confuse some listeners outside of Sweden; what happened to Vol. 1? Outside Sweden, that disc, featuring Linde's Violin Concerto -- his most celebrated work -- and Cello Concerto, appeared on Naxos rather than Swedish Society. This disc begins with Linde's most popular non-concerted work, A Merry Overture (1954), which wears its "50-talisterna" sympathies on its sleeve and is quite literally like Shostakovich meets Benjamin Britten. Musica Concertante (1963) is much in the same vein, whereas Suite Variée (1959) is a bit more serious-minded and Suite Boulogne (1966) sounds like French film music with a Swedish accent. Linde's music sparkles as it entertains, but it does seem a little buffoonish at times and lacking in substance; even if the listener is predisposed to predominantly tonal orchestral music from the mid-twentieth century, one would like Linde to add a little more grist to the wheel. Sundkvist's interpretations are strongly sympathetic to the idiom and give the music plenty of gusto. Swedish Society's recording is clear, well defined, and loud.

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