The Swedish Radio Choir: ...a riveder le stelle

The concert is given in the presence of H. R. H. Crown Princess Victoria.

The ethereal sound of Arve Henriksen’s trumpet, Anders Jormin’s flowing double bass and Sinnika Langeland’s meditative singing and kantele-playing have previously been heard in several successful collaborations. When the trio now joins the Swedish Radio Choir and Kaspars Putniņš in a concert of contemporary Swedish music rooted in folk music, we can look forward to a genre-bending, partly improvised, journey on a musical theme that celebrates the immeasurable dimensions of nature

“We have lived in an anthropocentric world since the Enlightenment, ignoring nature’s potential with its rich variety of colours and shapes. Art is, like nature, a place where we can achieve emotional wisdom that goes beyond the intellect,” says Kaspars Putniņš.

Composer Mirjam Tally has worked with changes in the landscape in her choral/orchestral work Från ljus till mörker (From light to darkness), a musical journey through the seasons taking the Sami tradition as the starting point. In her new choral work Sky over the Lake, commissioned by the Swedish Radio Choir, she has made a musical adaptation of the poem “Dock” by the American poet Ann Keniston. In a few moving lines it describes the unfathomableness of nature and our fumbling attempts at existing in unison with it.

Jesper Nordin, who often borrows inspiration from traditional folk music, has based his most recent choral work on the language of traditional mountain pasture stock farming. The ancient vocal technique kulning is a theme with variations that runs through this first performance for the Swedish Radio Choir.

The British poet Tom Hiron’s poetry connects with all that is unfathomable and wild. His poems often balance on the edge between the abyss and the light. When the composer Johannes Pollak was commissioned by the Swedish Radio Choir, he chose Hiron’s unpublished poem “Songs for an Impossible Future”, which is about an unyielding determination to turn despair into hope and make things grow in the dust.
Mats Larsson Gothe’s choral work The Pigeons is based on Håkan Sandell’s poem “Duvorna”. Having lost their grandeur and resorted to “mocked shabby clowns”, the pigeons long to yet again fly in the wild, expressed by Larsson Gothe through vigorous vocal polyphony.
Yoik singing, which creates an emotional bond between humans, animals and nature, is at the heart of Jan Sandström’s choral work Biegga luohte from 1998. The title in the Sami language translates as Yoik to the Mountain Wind. It is based on a Christian yoik by
Johan Märak.

The concert concludes with Ingvar Lidholm’s seminal … a rivider le stelle from 1974, a dramatic, emotional journey that goes from darkness of hell to the joys of heaven in Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia. In combination with Lidholm’s shimmering music it is possible to believe in a world where the wonders of nature offer a sense of light and hope.

Text: Anna Hedelius