Composer Festival – Hope and Longing

Final concert of the Composer Festival featuring music by Klas Torstensson. It opens with an exploration of the inner workings of the bass saxophone. Yes – the inside of the instrument, rather than traditionally blown notes, is the main focus here. It puffs, mutters and groans, as if saxophonist Jörgen Pettersson were trying to get a great machine up and running.

American-born violinist Joe Puglia has long been based in the Netherlands, like Torstensson himself. Puglia is the soloist in Pocket Size Violin Concerto – a miniature version of the violin concerto Torstensson composed in 2010. Here, he draws on influences such as Swedish folk music and American fiddling tradition.

After the interval, we hear two songs from the award-winning cycle In grosser Sehnsucht, in which each piece is a portrait of a historical woman: Camille Claudel, Frida Kahlo, Queen Christina of Sweden, Rosa Luxemburg and Louise Michel. The texts are based on diary entries, letters and poems. Featured here are Árbol de la Esperanza (Frida Kahlo) and Océaniennes (Louise Michel, anarchist and leading figure in the 1871 Paris Commune).

Sieben mal NEO (“Seven times NEO”) was composed for Norrbotten NEO and is a more compact version of Sieben mal Sieben, originally written for the Dutch New European Ensemble. The commission called for a sibling piece to Arnold Schoenberg’s Serenade from 1924 – including touches of Viennese light music. The work is a suite in seven movements for seven musicians. Members of KammarensembleN perform under the direction of conductor Christian Karlsen.

Volcanic forces, but also the most tender and heartbreakingly emotional music – Klas Torstensson moves between extremes. Born in Sweden but long based in the Netherlands, he is a composer with significant international reach. This year’s Composer Festival focuses primarily on his work from the past two decades, but also includes music from the early 1970s, making the festival a wide-ranging retrospective.