In most biographical sketches, Hilding Rosenberg is portrayed as a sensible, solid composer, and his work is described as being well-considered and controlled with craftsmanlike...

In most biographical sketches, Hilding Rosenberg is portrayed as a sensible, solid composer, and his work is described as being well-considered and controlled with craftsmanlike skill. In fact, he cultivated this persona, as an effective way of concealing the most exciting ambiguity Swedish music has ever known. He was the first composer to have assimilated the depths of all the new music trends from Continental Europe; at the same time, he was the only composer in Sweden to successfully find his way back to the light spirit of the music of Haydn. And so, when he wrote an "overture in black and white" there is some allusion to the autobiographical in the name: Ouvertura Bianca-nera. Officially, however, the name had a different explanation, having been composed for the opening of the International Pen Club Congress in Stockholm in 1946. There is a letter in which Grieg describes his intentions in composing the G Minor Quartet: "My ambition is to be extremely expansive, to display wide-ranging imagination and, above all, to use the full sound range of the instruments for which I am composing." Various voices have been raised indicating the feeling that Grieg went a bit far in his expansiveness and his demands for full sound - in fact, the quartet as an ensemble cannot quite embrace such a wealth of material. This problem has been solved by allowing the ensemble itself to expand. Here, the string orchestra does real justice to Grieg's music.