Bernd Alois Zimmermann / Allan Pettersson

In his early works the Cologne composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann remained conceptually allied with Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg and their music of densely intertwined themes and motifs in atonal and twelvetone form. His Symphony in One Movement, written in 1951, swung “in giant arcs, from apocalyptic menace to an immersion in mysticism,” as he put it. This highly expressive and dramatic music appears still to be haunted by the terrors of the Nazi period and the Second World War.

Sometimes referred to as “the Swedish Gustav Mahler”, Allan Pettersson follows an even more meditative course in his 7th Symphony, first performed in 1968: brooding repetitions, earthy ostinato rhythms and great melodic arcs in a – like Zimmermann’s, deeply religious – confessional music whose seemingly infinite stream of sound calls out to be heard in a deep, inner listening mode.