Atterberg Symphony No. 6 by Chandos

Chandos has quietly been building a Kurt Atterberg series, and not a moment too soon. This Swedish composer — born 1887, died 1974, and unjustly marooned in the footnotes of music history for most of the intervening decades — deserves far better than the neglect he’s endured. His music presses every button that late Romantic listeners respond to: sweeping melody, vivid orchestral color, atmosphere you can practically smell. Think Korngold without the Hollywood contract, or Steiner with a Nordic chill in the air.

My own conversion happened years ago, through a 1982 Caprice disc of the Symphony No. 3 — the West Coast Pictures — with Sixten Ehrling and the Stockholm Philharmonic. I was simply floored. Haven’t recovered since.

This new release sets a high bar.

The Sixth Symphony is the famous one, the so-called Dollar Symphony, and its backstory is almost too good. In 1928, the Columbia Phonograph Company announced a competition to mark the Schubert centenary — composers were initially invited to complete the Unfinished. The outcry was swift and fierce, and Columbia retreated to a safer brief: write a symphony in Schubert’s spirit. Five hundred entries arrived from twenty-six countries. Carl Nielsen sat among the judges. Atterberg won the $10,000 grand prize, and — this detail is irresistible — promptly bought himself a Ford Model A.

The work earned its nickname honestly.

What Atterberg actually wrote is brazenly enjoyable — the opening movement all fanfares and heroic swagger, the kind of music Errol Flynn might have swashed a buckle to. It’s noble without being pompous, which is harder than it sounds. Then the central Adagio arrives, and everything opens up: a long-breathed lyrical theme floats over rippling string ostinatos, soft as a breeze moving across still water, before gathering itself into something genuinely impassioned — the emotional temperature rising in a way that recalls the finale of the West Coast Pictures Third Symphony, that same quality of inevitability. The scampering finale brings everything back down to earth. Cheeky, quick-footed, unashamedly tuneful.

The Symphony No. 4, Sinfonia piccola, draws on Swedish folk material and opens with real ferocity — urgent, almost combative — before relaxing into something more rustic and merry, a jaunty tune riding a restless ostinato. Sibelius haunts the texture here and there: quivering strings, horn-calls disappearing into the middle distance, woodwinds with that particular Nordic pertness. Then drums, a brief storm, and sunshine again.

The performances throughout are committed and well-shaped, the recorded sound exceptional — cleaner and more present than anything the competition currently offers in this repertoire. If you’ve never encountered Atterberg, start here. If you have — well, you already know what you’re getting, and this is the best available.