By chance, while cleaning up my lists of favorite channels on the cable TV DVR, on Music Choice I happened to hear the beginning of a symphony that sounded interesting, by a Swedish composer I couldn’t recall ever hearing before. Kurt Atterberg.
I ended up sitting through the entire piece, and enjoyed it enough to buy a CD copy on Amazon. Here is Atterberg’s 8th symphony, taken from the same performance that I ordered:
Why is Kurt Atterberg’s name not more familiar? When he wrote his 8th symphony in the 40’s, Romantic music was still popular, at least with general audiences.
After ordering the CD I went looking for an answer, and found a possible explanation. Atterberg was believed to be a Nazi sympathizer.
Another musical figure with a Nazi connection, the German conductor Herbert Von Karajan, found terrific success after the war, but Atterberg’s career faded. He stayed on at his day job in Sweden’s patent office, apparently ignored and embittered.