Postponed: Composer Weekend – Air-Spiral-Light

Benjamin Staern’s Composer Weekend concludes with chamber music.

Benjamin Staern is one of Sweden’s most played and popular composers. His music is deeply personal and characterised by a powerfully emotional sound. For Benjamin Staern, colour is tangible: he is a synesthete – sounds and tones appear to him as specific colours, a trait which is highly present in his compositions.

His oeuvre includes everything from orchestral and chamber music to solo pieces and electroacoustic music. Many orchestras and ensembles all over Europe and Asia have performed his music. He has also received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Christ Johnson Prize in 2012, Sweden’s most prestigious award for composers.

The fact that music is colour for Benjamin Staern is central to the chamber opera Hilma – An Opera About Hidden Art, which had its world premiere at Moderna Museet in Stockholm in 2019. The libretto was composed by Mira Bartov and is about the life of artist Hilma af Klint. The opera has also been performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Three interludes from the opera will be performed at this concert. 

Salomos Sång (Song of Solomon) was commissioned by Lizzie Oved Scheja and Jewish Culture in Sweden, and is dedicated to Lizzie Oved Scheja. The lyrics are from Oscar Levertin’s final poem cycle, King Solomon and Morolf (1905). “It became the starting point for my song cycle, a ‘five-act’” – a drama that describes the lifecycle of a person: love, sadness, sorrow, and a final farewell to life. The soprano soloist is Hannah Holgersson, who also sang at the world premiere at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2017.

As the title suggests, Air-Spiral-Light is about air, movement and light, but the music also leverages the incredibly expressive potential of the guitar. In the introduction, we hear the peals of wine glasses which, together with the guitar, create a nearly stratospheric feel. The soloist is Jacob Kellerman, one of our most prominent young guitarists, with a special interest in contemporary music.

For his “lightning-quick virtuosity, stage presence and tonal depth,” the young clarinettist Magnus Holmander received the Wind Music Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He was also selected for Rising Stars 2020. Here, we will hear him in Benjamin Staern’s playful Scherzo assurdo.