Atterberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 6. Ari Rasilainen, Radio-Philharmonia Hannover des NDR. CPO 999 640-2.

Atterberg: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 6. Ari Rasilainen, Radio-Philharmonia Hannover des NDR. CPO 999 640-2.

Maybe I can best sum up my reaction to this disc by saying that I sat down to listen to it three times, the first two times finding myself picking up a magazine or a newspaper a few minutes in and forgetting about the music. The third time I forced myself to concentrate. Both the Third and the Sixth Symphonies were new to me (well, heck, Atterberg was new to me), and I'm not sure what I expected.

Swedish composer Kurt Atterberg was born in 1887 and died in 1974, so I suppose I expected to hear something fairly modem, maybe a little terse or experimental. Instead, what I heard was mostly Romantic in the Third Symphony, sometimes big and bold, sometimes soft and pastoral; and in the Sixth, a more dramatic rendering of somewhat familiar subject matter that the booklet note says may be intended as parody.

The sound, like the music, is on the generic side. CPO's sonics are fine, relatively clean and clear, but without much range of frequency or dynamics noticeable; nor is there a lot of warmth, ambiance, bloom, transparency, depth, or presence, or any of the qualities one usually associates with great recordings. Does all of this sound like a lukewarm review? Yeah, I'd say so.