Moses Pergament, Volume Two: Songs

Tuuli Lindeberg, soprano Martin Malmgren, piano

Published by Toccata Classics on February 6, 2026

The Swedish composer Moses Pergament (1893-1977) - Finnish-born of Lithuanian-Jewish stock - chose the poems he set to music from a wide range of sources: those heard in this first-ever recording of his songs are mostly in Swedish but also in a variety of other languages. They likewise cover the gamut of human emotion, from buoyant folksongs and children's verses via lyrical expressions of love and loss to stark meditations on suffering and death. Many of Pergament's poets evoke the natural world in their expression of emotion, but his music never yields to sentimentality: he treats each song as a microcosm, expressed with drama and dignity. Time was when Pergament's vocal music was performed by singers of the calibre of Birgit Nilsson, Elisabeth Soderstrom and Nicolai Gedda; it is high time it was rediscovered.

Moses Pergament, Volume One: A Musical Miscellany

Published by Toccata Classics on October 4, 2024

Nominated for the Swedish Grammis Award in the category Best Classical CD of the Year 2025

The neglect of Moses Pergament (1893–1977) can be ascribed in part to the complexities of his life: he was born in Finland of Lithuanian-Jewish stock, a student in Russia and a Swedish citizen by 1919. As a result, no national culture stepped forward to claim him, with his outsider status initially worsened by blatant anti-Semitism – and the gradual realisation that he was one of the most interesting Swedish composers of the mid-twentieth century then fell away again after his death. This series of recordings aim to return his music to the public ear, beginning with an album tracing the growth of his style, from early Romanticism to a spicy Bartókian vivacity, occasionally animated by Jewish melos and dance-rhythms.