“Here loving service is done to a composer who is perhaps Sweden’s most important symphonist and certainly its most popular one.” This is what FonoForum wrote of Vol. 2 of our edition of symphonic works by Hugo Alfvén, who numbers among the most productive and most versatile Swedish cultural personalities. Alfvén’s Symphony No. 2 brought him a success that he termed his definitive artistic breakthrough. A second performance was held during the same year, and it was not long before it was also being presented in foreign countries. This work became his most popular symphony and the first of his compositions to appear in print (1900). At the time national Romantic tones had long dominated music by Swedish composers, while Alfvén adopted a taste that was more Continental – a fact that reviewers registered with astonishment. His Swedish Rhapsody No. 3, a composition featuring impressive work with motifs from Swedish folk music, rounds off this album.
