Henrik Hellstenius’s music is best heard as an intense reflection on the times we’re in, each piece the culmination of a slate-cleaning hunt for new...

Henrik Hellstenius’s music is best heard as an intense reflection on the times we’re in, each piece the culmination of a slate-cleaning hunt for new sounds and delivery techniques that best serve the text (or subtext) in question and often draw out rich assets from minimal or unassuming material. Hellstenius’s own Dichterliebe from 2015 consists of ‘composed interpretations’ of eight of Schumann’s songs – a look at Dichterliebe through twenty-first century eyes but with the apparatus of the symphony orchestra. An excavation of the original music’s structural and emotional layers led Hellstenius to look for ways of allowing the songs to ‘ring with a new atmosphere and sound.