Hilding Rosenberg - Symphony No. 3 "Four Ages of Man" (1930s)
Conducted by Mario Venzago with the Göteborgs Symfoniker.
I. Moderato - Allegro - 00:00
II. Andante Sostenuto - 12:14
III. Allegro Con Fuoco - Molto Marcato - 20:31
IV. Andante Semplice - 27:42
Hilding Rosenberg (June 21, 1892 -- May 18, 1985), was the first Swedish modernist composer, and one of the most influential figures in Swedish 20th century classical music.
Born in Bosjökloster, he was an organist, concert pianist and music teacher until 1915, when he began studying at the Stockholm Conservatory under Ernst Ellberg. His teachers also included Richard Andersson and Wilhelm Stenhammar. After the First World War, he toured Europe and became a prominent conductor.
During a career lasting more than six decades, Hilding Rosenberg composed a large number of works; his extensive work list includes eight symphonies and twelve string quartets, and bears testimony both to an extraordinarily creative imagination, and to the composer's profound respect for tradition and craftsmanship. But from early on Rosenberg was also unusually open to the modernist currents of the early 20th century and, to the fairly provincial Swedish musical establishment at the time, he soon became a symbol of everything that was incomprehensible in 'modern music'.
During the 1930s he composed music for a number of theatre productions, both on stage and for the radio, and his Third Symphony was actually first presented as a 'radio play' entitled 'The Four Ages of Man'. In this first incarnation, the four movements, with titles referring to 'The Child', 'The Boy', 'The Youth' and 'The Man', were interspersed with extended passages of recited texts. Rosenberg later removed these as well as the movement titles, making his final revisions to the work in 1950
