BERWALD – Andantino (1819) – FOUR CELLOS

Other Identification:
A small concert piece, originally for solo piano.

Franz Adolf Berwald (23rd July 1796 – 3rd April 1868) was a Swedish Romantic composer and violinist. He made his living as an orthopedist and later as the manager of a saw mill and glass factory, and became more appreciated as a composer after his death than he had been in his lifetime. Prominent in his oeuvre are several operas, much chamber music and four symphonies.

In 1818 Berwald started publishing the Musikalisk journal, later renamed Journal de musique, a periodical with easy piano pieces and songs by various composers as well as some of his own original work. In 1821, his Violin Concerto was premiered by his brother August. It was not well received; some people in the audience burst out laughing during the slow movement.

His family got into dire economic circumstances after the death of his father in 1825. He stopped composing during his time in Berlin, resuming only in 1841 with a move to Vienna and marriage to Mathilde Scherer. In 1842 a concert of his tone poems at the Redoutensaal at the Hofburg Imperial Palace this time received extremely positive reviews, and over the course of the next three years Berwald was animated enough to write four symphonies.

Berwald’s music was not recognised favourably in Sweden during his lifetime, even drawing hostile newspaper reviews, but fared a little better in Germany and Austria. The Mozarteum Salzburg made him an honorary member in 1847.

He died in 1868. It took a fair while before Berwald was recognized as, to quote composer-critic Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, writing in the Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s “most original and modern composer”.