Composer Weekend Tarrodi – Stellar Clouds

Composer Weekend 2018, held 12–15 April, is dedicated to Andrea Tarrodi, whose music will “take your breath away”, as Dagens Nyheter wrote. Qualities often mentioned include her music’s colourful richness and peculiar play of light. She has garnered significant attention in recent years, and her work has been performed several times before at Konserthuset.

Tarrodi says her thoughts were of water before she began the actual process of composing Ascent – Concerto for Orchestra. She saw the depths of the ocean before her and wanted the music to begin there. “I also reflected a great deal on the contrasts between the city and nature, and how these two environments can exist in the mind at the same time.” Andrea Tarrodi also describes the piece as “a sort of ascent from the orchestra’s very lowest register to its highest.”

The piano concerto Stellar Clouds was composed specifically for pianist Peter Friis Johansson and as the title indicates, the starting point for the music can be associated with space. We will also hear Debussy’s Printemps, originally composed for two pianos. As a note to Debussy’s original, arranger Henri Büsser has included a very prominent piano section in the orchestral movement.