Category: Daily Dispatch

During his time with the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation (1937-1944), Lars-Erik Larsson provided music for everything from cantatas to radio plays to brief vignettes to accompany the recitation of poetry.

Material from these projects would frequently find its way into the composer’s concert works. Most notably, three of the six movements of “Hours the Day,” from 1938, were organized into what went on to become the composer’s most famous piece, the “Pastoral Suite.”

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we’ll hear the world premiere recording, from 1994, of the complete, original, six-movement work, alongside another one of Larsson’s poetic suites for radio, “God in Disguise,” from 1940.

Larsson had been asked as early as 1930 if he would be interested in setting to music Hjalmar Gullberg’s cycle of poems. Gullberg, then the head of Swedish Radio’s drama division, took as his starting point Euripides’ “Alcestis,” in which the god Apollo, temporarily exiled from Olympus, acts as servant and shepherd to King Admetus of Thessaly.

It would be a full decade before the project was realized, in part due to the scale of the undertaking. By then, neighboring Denmark and Norway were under Nazi occupation. Gullberg wrote additional text to mold the work into a protest against violence in the world. In spite – or perhaps because – of the harsh reality of the times, “God in Disguise” retains an optimistic and indeed a determinedly pastoral outlook.

This too will be heard in a world premiere recording, from 1956, featuring speaker Lars Ekborg, soprano Elisabeth Soderstrom, and the orchestra and chorus conducted by Stig Westerberg.

Brush up on your Swedish, as we celebrate all that is worthy and simple. I hope you’ll join me for “Best at Verse” – Lars-Erik Larsson’s poetic suites for radio – this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.