Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The present release is a recording from the performance of the first modern revival at Drottningholm Palace Theatre, Stockholm, June 7th, 1973 of the dramatic opera in three acts composed in 1787 by Georg Joseph (Abbe) Vogler. The year is 1613. The war between Sweden and Denmark is drawing to a crucial point. The young and rather new King Gustaf II Adolf is in the field while Ebba Brahe, whom he adored ever since he was a child, is a lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Queen Kristina. Ebba and Gustaf Adolf intend marrying as soon as he got home, but the Dowager Queen disapprove their plans, and instead wants the King to find a royal bride. To prevent the marriage, she tries to get Ebba to doubt his love and fidelity, and intrigues. Eventually she gets Ebba marrying Admiral Jacob de la Gardie instead, and when the King shortly after return from the decisive battle against Denmark, he stands before the fait accompli. In his despair, he is considering to seek death, but is persuaded by his people continuing to lead them as a fatherly, wise and diligent King. The King realizes that duty and people's love is greater and more important than his own personal happiness. Gustaf Adolf reconciled with Ebba and congratulate the bride and groom.

Classical Music

The Swedish soprano Iwa Sörenson studied at the Music Academies in Gothenburg and Cologne and at the Opera School in Gothenburg. She made her opera début in Don Pasquale at Malmö Opera och Musikteater in 1978. She has appeared in leading rôles in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Faust, Les contes d’Hoffmann, Carmen, Rigoletto, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella, Capriccio, Dialogues des Carmélites, La Bohème and The Cunning Little Vixen, among other works, at the Royal Swedish Opera. For this release, she has chosen poetic and romantic songs by composers Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, Ingemar Liljefors, Sven-Eric Johanson, and others, showing her skill for performing music from each and every time period.

The saxophone, being a modern instrument, has a very recent musical literature that covers all the 20th century, which includes all the new compositive languages and stimulates the composers’ creativity. All the compositions included in the project show various expressive, technical and stylistic skills of the soprano saxophone. They sum up different musical languages, that vary from the typical classical style to the contemporary one, from the evocative music to the cinematographic one, following each composer’s specific characteristics. The project was born thanks to the collaboration with some of the greatest contemporary Italian composers: Sergio Rendine, Ennio Morricone, Nicola Piovani and Luis Bacalov Oscar awards; the famous harpist Cecilia Chailly, the cellist Giovanni Sollima and the chamber music writers Marco Tutino, Marco Betta, Giovanni D’Aquila and the Opera writer Lorenzo Ferrero. In this CD these great contemporary authors have written, just for the sax soloist Mimmo Malandra, compositions that will be performed for the very first time here. In conclusion, this album could be defined as unique. This production is born thanks to the trust and high regard felt by many musicians for the art of the soprano sax of Mimmo Malandra.

Classical Music

It is easier to find roles that Laila did not sing. On the question who she liked to sing with, she immediately answered Rolf Bjorling. ''He was a top singer who you really could trust'', she said. ''He had the same timbre and body form as his father Jussi. Gedda was more distant, not just as loving on the stage as Rolf, but Gedda had a wonderful sense of humor.'' With Gedda she sang Tosca in Savonlinna under Sixten Ehrling. When Laila sang her last performance at the Stockholm Opera in the role as Elektra, on the 4th of May, 1996, the role list was decorated with a colored photo with the singer and a hundred of piano reductions. They contained the hundred roles that Laila sang in the Stockholm Opera during her 32 years as an employee. A most unusual record. Now Laila has also written her memoirs. She tells about her long, variable and successful career, but also difficult ordeals in her private life, for instance the stroke she suffered in 2003, and how to survive even if you are severely harrowed.

Classical Music

I composed Para dos violines" for Duo Gelland, first as a shorter piece - mainly what is now the first movement. For a project with the society Samtida Musik (Contemporary Music) I expanded the piece into a work of four ovements. On September 30, 2015, "Para dos violines" was premiered at the Culture House in Skarpnäck, South Stockholm. After the concert, Duo Gelland asked me if I would consdier adding a fifth movement. The completed five movement work was the ngive its first performance on June, 11, 2016 at a concert in Lübeck, Germany. "Des Menschen Wort vergeht" is a poem written by Karl Wolfskehl in 1934. It deals with man killing the word, how he drains it and twists its true meaning. It feels only too relevant today. I composed this work in 2013, commissioned by Swedish Arts Council for Vollen United who premiered it at the Sound of Stockhold Festival that same year. "Rite Now" is an old work, composed in 1991. I had planned to write a lyrical piece for string trio and electronics. The piece was, however heavily affected by an ongoing war and turned into something rather nasty. A string trio recorded nine voices to which I added percussion and electronics. "Rite Now" can be listened to as it is on this recording, or with strings and/or percussion playing along with the recording. It must be performed at very high volume, really loud! "SXQII" was composed in 2014 for the Stockhold Saxophone Quartet who premiered it on March 19, 2016, at a concert at Musikaliska, Stockholm. "Night Music" was composed in 2016 for Yoriko Asahara, Mats Jansson, Björn Malmqvist, and Bo Pettersson. It was commissioned by the ensemble with support from Helge Axson-Josson's foundation. Karin Almlöf's painting ont eh cover served as inspiration for the composition of Night Music.

Welcome into the Birgittine sisters' world of Gregorian chant! Also known as Fr�lsarorden, the Birgittine Order is the only one with Scandinavian origins. Saint Birgitta (ca 1303-1373) and her collaborator and confessor, Petrus Olavi of Sk�nninge, laid it's foundations in Rome, in the 1350s. Birgitta had moved there in 1349, and remained in that city for the rest of her life. After the first Birgittine abbey opened in Vadstena in 1384, the order rapidly spread across Europe. The chants on this recording are from the Birgittine Abbey, Maria Refugie in Uden, The Netherlands and this is the first time that chants from the rich collection in Maria Refugie have been recorded. It is also the first recording of the Birgittine repertoire from sources dating after the Middle Ages. The ensemble has selected 37 chants that reflect the musical and textual richness of Cantus sororum. The material spans more than 400 years, yet forms a coherent repertoire that belongs to the Gregorian chant tradition in all important aspects, with a Birgittine twist.

Classical Music

His first contact with music, Torbj�rn got at the age of three when his father Iwan brought home a gramophone and played the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 by Franz Liszt. It made an indelible impression on Torbj�rn and already at the age of four, he had taken interest in his mother Ester's inherited piano. When the Soviet army marched into Prague in 1968 Torbj�rn got the impulse to complete the Symphony No. 2 (for freedom), already commenced at the time of the 1956 Hungary crisis, but not completed then due to lack of time. He was now an established composer, and the piece was well received at the premi�re with Malm� Symphony Orchestra under his own direction in 1971. Torbj�rn Iwan fell ill in the spring of 1993 with cancer, and life and composing slowed down. He had since his move to the provinces less contact with the music scene in Stockholm and now it ceased almost completely. All available strength was used to complete the rediscovered symphony he surprisingly had found in his archive, which originally was intended to become number 5, but now was numbered 9. The symphony, which he called Survival after a series of successful treatments for the disease, and the song cycles Chamber Music to texts by James Joyce and Pour l'�ternit� to texts by Jean-Luc Caron were his last completed works. At his passing, an unfinished score of the Symphony No. 10 and another try with the Sarek symphony were found on his desk. [Dag Lundquist]

When Torbjorn Iwan Lundquist in 1962 was asked to compose the music score for the screen adaptation of Selma Lagerlof's Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige (Adventures of Nils Holgersson), he was already a well-known composer of film music. By 1954 he had written the scores for 16 films, and three other movies with his music were premiered the same year as Nils Holgersson. In 1962, Lundquist was engaged to compose the music for the grandiose and lavish 'Adventure of Nils Holgersson,' an adaptation of Selma Lagerlof's novel, directed by Kenne Fant. It was to be a film in color with stunning aerial photographs of Sweden and with music by Lundquist. It was actually the first time a complete soundtrack in a Swedish film was released on LP. The Suite from this score is paired here with the Suites from Gosta Berling's saga as well as some additional movements which were used in radio dramas.