Martinsson at last
enjoys a disc dedicated to his orchestral
music. It comes his way just two years
short of his fiftieth birthday. All
praise again to the Swedish National
Council for Cultural Affairs and to
Daphne’s guiding genius Björn Uddén
who made the disc possible.
Martinsson has his
own website at: http://www.rolfmartinsson.com/
where you can find out more about him.
The key facts are that studies at Malmö
(1981-85) were with Sven-David Sandström,
Sven-Erik Bäck, Hans Eklund and
Sven-Eric Johanson. He now teaches composition
and arrangement at the same Malmö
Academy. He is the Malmö orchestra’s
composer-in-residence. Martinsson has
upwards of eighty compositions to his
name.
The lengthiest piece
here is the nine movement, 26 minute,
Kalliope, a dance suite for string
orchestra. Each movement celebrates
a particular muse. It wasn’t all that
long ago that I was reviewing
Cyril Scott’s Third Symphony The
Muses but that elusively exotic
work, written in an idiom very different
from that of Martinsson, portrays only
Melpomene, Thalia, Erato
and Terpsichore.
A few words about the
muses. The Muses are the goddesses of
culture and the arts. The Greek legend
has it that Zeus lay with Mnemosyne
("Memory") for nine days. She gave birth
to the Muses who then inhabited Mount
Helicon -- "nine voices united in one
song." Their companions are the Graces.
Their leader is Apollo, the god of music
and harmony.
The nine Muses are:
Calliope, the fair of voice; Clio, the
proclaimer; Euterpe, the giver of pleasure;
Melpomene the maker of songs; Terpsichore,
the dancer; Erato, the muse of love
poetry; Polyhymnia, the goddess of many
hymns; Thalia, the comedic muse; and
Urania, the heavenly muse. A good site
with more detail is: www.eliki.com/portals/fantasy/circle/define.html
Kalliope’s
dance movements are Kalliope
(transparent, cool yet fervent); Urania
(use of pizzicato, a swooning allusion
to La Valse and a sweetly singing
solo violin); Terpsichore (hysteria
and whirling activity); Euterpe;
Polyhymnia (a massed string orchestra
‘in flight’); Melpomene (a melancholy
solo violin over trembling confiding
strings); Clio (poignant, muscular
and assertive writing); Erato
(music that emulates the passage of
time - a ticking clock and searching
string tone); and Thalia (as
in Terpsichore and Polyhymnia,
a sense of the unrelenting hunt, the
music whirling, twisting and turning;
episodes of Shostakovich-like bleakness).
Each concise episode vividly sketches
in moods and spiritual states. There
is a typical Scandinavian chill or coolness
in the marrow of this very adept and
sensitive tonal string writing.
At the End of
Time (Vid tidens slut)
is a piece for narrator , flute, oboe,
clarinet and strings. The narrator,
towards the end (10:22), becomes the
singer. The words are spoken by their
author Jacques Werup. This recording
is taken from a live performance on
New Year’s Eve 2003 - there’s the occasional
muted cough in the background. There
is no bombast in this music; nothing
of the parade ground. Instead we get
a burning sincerity delivered through
the gently underpinning music and Werup’s
wondering narration. This is a deliciously
melancholic meditation on love and death
and into the piece is woven a candid
quotation from Rachmaninov’s Second
Piano Concerto (7:20). It is a roundedly
sentimental soliloquy. The accompanying
booklet includes an English and German
translation of the text.
The overture-length
A.S. in Memoriam leans
on the full, expressive warmth of the
Malmö Strings. This is said to
be ‘perhaps the best-loved of Martinsson’s
compositions’. A.S. is none other than
Arnold Schoenberg and the work Martinsson
celebrates is Verklärte Nacht
written in 1899 with the Martinsson
written in 1999. The music has a piercingly
intense and rolling quality alternating
in style between Schoenberg and Scriabin.
The piece ends in a smooth and suave
breath.
Dreams is
a tone poem for full orchestra. The
piece was inspired by, reflects and
interprets the composer’s experience
in seeing Kurosawa’s film Dreams during
the early 1990s. It is for me the least
impressive work here. Martinsson portrays
a sequence melting kaleidoscopically
between idyll and nightmare. The idiom
is decidedly 1970s modern with volleys
from percussion, riotous violence, stabbing
little mottos, and goblin thudding (12.39).
The writing is very allusive with Straussian
moments crowding into Ravel’s La
Valse and gorgeous Scriabin-style
sighs (1.40). From 9:00 onwards the
music settles into Sargasso dreamland
with static held string chords and harp
whispers. There is a remarkable bleak
solo violin passage at 21:20. As the
piece ends there is a modest heartbeat
from the strings - a gesture familiar
from as in Erato in Kalliope.
The Malmö Symphony
Orchestra performs under its Principal
Guest Conductor Markus Lehtinen for
At the End of Time and for the
other pieces Principal Conductor Christoph
König.
This is a very welcome
new arrival in the Daphne catalogue
which you can inspect at http://www.daphne.se/
Other highlights from that Björn’s
roll-call include the upcoming Wirén
string quartet series, the Nystroem
songs, the Rosenberg piano concertos
and two volumes of Rosenberg’s solo
piano music.
An intelligently assembled collection
with Kalliope and At the End
of Time standing strongly in the
string orchestra and melodrama stakes.
Rob Barnett
Malmö Symphony Orchestra/Christoph König
(except *) 