Pettersson's Seven Sonatas for two violins date from 1951 while he was a member of Honegger's class in Paris and at the same time studying privately with that amiable apostle of the dodecaphonic faith, Rene Leibowitz. The sonatas vary greatly in length and quality, and the dedicated performances by Josef Grunfarb and Karl-Ove Mannberg were recorded in 1973 and 1977-8. No. 1 is the longest at 13'17'', and No. 7 the shortest at 3'28''! I thought the Third and Seventh of ''slender interest'', when they first appeared, in harness with the Barefoot songs, on LP but at that time I had not heard the remainder. They are expertly laid out for the instruments and are not in any way serial in construction. In terms of sonority they at times approach Bartok.
No one of sound mind would play all these pieces at one sitting and though I did space them out over a period, I returned on each occasion with an increasing admiration for the players. All the same, the sonatas themselves strike me as of indifferent quality and ultimately pretty anonymous. Pettersson has written better things such as the Mesto for strings (the last movement of his Concerto No. 3 for strings of 1956-7) or the Seventh Symphony.'