Oliver Cromwell signed a trade agreement, 350 years ago, between England and Sweden - an event some might consider one of the more obscure footnotes in history, but which is now being commemorated in From Sweden, a year-long survey of Anglo-Swedish cultural relations. Most of the events take place through the coming winter, though Anne Sofie von Otter's recital with her regular accompanist Bengt Forsberg served as both the festival's official opening and as something of a curtain-raiser.
Her programme was typically quirky. Pointing out that both countries enjoyed a musical renaissance in the first half of the 20th century, Von Otter placed Swedish and British songs side by side. Yet while the Swedes were represented by composers she has championed for ages - Stenhammar, Aulin, Rangstrom and so on - her excursions into British territory were comparatively obscure, focusing on Irish folk song settings by Howard Ferguson and Edwardian salon music by the likes of Montague Phillips and Mary Carew.
Von Otter can reputedly sing just about anything, but in this instance she occasionally went beyond her limits. Without the right accent, Ferguson's Folk Songs sounded American rather than Irish. Rangstrom's The Amazon ideally needs a more Wagnerian voice than she possesses. Stenhammar, meanwhile, wrote better songs than those offered in this instance, though she sang them with her usual matchless intelligence.
Elsewhere, however, she unearthed a few forgotten treasures, as one expected she might. Laci Boldemann's Four Epitaphs - written to English texts by a Swedish-speaking Finn - is an angry yet impressionistic song cycle that deserves to be heard more often. Tor Aulin's Four Serbian Folk Songs, delivered with great declamatory force, have a dark intensity curiously reminiscent of the folk-based songs of Bartok and De Falla, while Rangstrom's Old Dance proved deeply erotic. Carew's and Phillips's salon ballads, meanwhile, are no masterpieces, though they allowed her to camp it up something rotten, bringing the house down in the process.
