Gee, tinners, that image has quite a bit of what I can only describe as "undertow."

just listening to number 7 now (the only one fully intact on my ipod (grrr)); not finding it unpleasant at all!

Well, Dr Dish, had you looked closer, you might have found two by the right Hartmann at BRO on the Telarc Label - they even give twentieth century dates for him alongside. As it happens, general consensus is that they're rather opaque performances, though the recording is typically Telarcian in its clarity. If you're on the subject of Nordic symphonies, then I suppose we must mention Eduard Tubin as well: there was a brief flurry of interest in him on the old BBC board last year, mainly it seems in reaction to the Shostakovich centenary: however despite the adulation granted him then, interest seems to have waned markedly. There's also the near-obsessive mentions of Louis Glass's Fifth Symphony from Rob G: sadly, I tracked down a copy but found that the music had nothing like the same effect on me as it did on him. The are always the Langgaard works, though: there is a cycle of radically different outlook to most other composers of his time.

However, it does seem to me that we're in danger of behaving like the clichéd "If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium" tourists, just lining up one cycle after another to ride through at speed, getting a flavour with a couple of comfort breaks then zooming on to the next cultural marvel. In some ways that's bound to happen with a group of lifelong music listeners all trying to catch up with each others' specialities, but I have to report that this old timer is starting to find the pace too fast for him: I could lap up music at speed in my teens, but now I'm within forty months of my sixties, I simply can't move that fast any more.

I didn't get all the way through the Third yesterday evening before having to get back to thinking about things I have to do. I don't really know what the "Nordic symphony" idea is, though that's probably through ignorance, since my knowledge of most of its supposed exponents is sketchy or nonexistent. If I were asked to "place" the Pettersson symphonies I've heard so far (some in dim and distant memory) I would liken them more to Shostakovich (something about the way motifs emerge and are developed, and the abrupt changes of texture, and the more "pungent" orchestration) than Sibelius, and they also have a heart-on-sleeve quality which I don't think is generally associated with Nordic music.

I have a lot of sympathy with Ron's predicament. Being in touch through the MB with so many open-minded people at least one of whom at any given time will be enthusing infectiously about some new discovery of theirs, one can get somewhat "overfaced". I didn't really bring my Carter investigations to a conclusion, then there was talk about Stravinsky which sent me off in that direction, and now I have this massive Pettersson box (all the CDs in it have individual jewel cases!) demanding some kind of justice from my ears, which so far evidently they aren't really in a position to give. Plus there's always another composer who inevitably has first priority in my "listening"...

Anyway, what I'm going to do (I hope) is go through these pieces one by one and find something to say about each, which may take some time because if they start blurring into each other I shall have to relisten until I perceive their individual profile, if I can.

Well, Ron and Richard, JPE Hartmann only wrote two symphonies, and it's not like I'm asking you to listen to them!

I am addressing people who happen to HAVE listened to them and want to assess whether I'm crazy in thinking these are exactly halfway between Viennese Classicism and, say, Grieg.

I am also totally opposed to the tourist mentality, but I do feel that sometimes a quirky historical side road is more valuable than whole swaths of the repertoire. JPE Hartmann is just such a humble footpath, and down I go.

Carry on, Petterssonians. I thought the fifth Symphony very intelligently paced, mildly strange at times, and extremely dull.

I do, however, like the section where the (violas?) tap along in steady quavers(?) to accompany silence interrupted occasionally by impossibly high and short violin unisons.

I was listening to some of Hindemith's Kammermusik yesterday, and found some similarities in the sounds.  Cough; should have more to say soon than this soonish.

I've just finished listening to the Fifth. It's certainly impressed me most of the series so far, beginning from the slow and lugubrious counterpoint of the opening. The way it ends, in a similarly "shell-shocked" atmosphere to the endings of Shostakovich's Fourth and Eighth, is also rather memorable.
I'm not sure I can see how something can be both "intelligently paced" and "extremely dull", but maybe we'll hear more about that from CD. (This thread seems to be turning into something of a monologue though...) The pacing actually reminds me somewhat of Sibelius, in the way it changes by degrees. I wouldn't call the music dull, but there's a certain ponderous quality to the motivic developments and a "squareness" to the music's rhythmic character, in particular at faster tempi (though the latter criticism could be made of very many 20th century composers I think).