Franz Berwald

The other day, I posted about Scandinavian composers, and I was discussing Carl Nielsen from Denmark, while I had mentioned that probably the best Scandinavian composer of all times is Sibelius from Finland. That's all true, but listening to my CDs while driving today, I realized that there is another outstanding Scandinavian composer that I had neglected to mention in that post. I am talking about Franz Berwald from Sweden. Berwald, who lived from 1796 to 1868 was an unusual case of a composer. Why? Because he was originally ignored as a composer, and he was forced to work for living (!!). What job did he do? Well he was an orthopedic surgeon, but he obviously preferred composing than operating.

Berwald is another ingenius Scandinavian composer that left very high quality classic music behind him. If you never heard of him or his music, buy and listen to his Symphony No. 3 (Singulière) and/or his Symphony No. 4. I have no doubt that you will agree with me that that he was highly inspired and that his music is ingenius.