Bengt Hambræus had a major impact especially on the Swedish and Canadian musical cultures through his diverse activities: as an organist, educator, broadcaster, composer, and musicologist.

Between 1944 and 1948 he studied organ and in 1947 he began his academic studies at the University of Uppsala, worked at the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation and in 1972 was appointed Professor of Composition at McGill University, Montreal, a position he held until his retirement in 1995.

Claude Lenners’ Piano Concerto Phaeton shares both the rhythmic intensities and the moral concerns of Hambræus’s work, although the perspective is different. Phaeton, the son of Helios, the Sun God, convinced his father to let him drive the sun chariot over the heaven for one day. The horses did not obey Phaeton however, and came far too close to the earth. Zeus intervened and struck Phaeton dead with a thunderbolt.