Åke Erikson became
known in Sweden in the 1960s and 1970s as a radical composer
and pianist, becoming involved in the organisation of, and composing
for the Uppsala League and ‘Fylkingen’, societies which concentrated
on new music. He worked as a jazz pianist in his early career
and has made a great number of arrangements of jazz music, but
this influence barely shows in the works in this collection.
This is an album of serious, substantial and well-crafted work,
which will prove a great deal more attractive to a wider public
than several other issues one might encounter on the Phono Suecia
label.
The opening ‘Fanfare’
is compact and concise, and is apparently played every summer
from the towers of the Cathedral of Uppsala. ‘Straight Out’
was commissioned by the Linné Quintet, and is by turns sonorous
and moody; rhythmic and punchy. Both of these pieces are well
played, and I like the Linné’s rounded tone.
‘Where Heaven and
Sea Command’ is for a cappella choir, and was awarded first
prize at a choral competition in Pardubice. The piece makes
use of vocal layering, building tidal movements of sound while
the text, from poems by Elisabet Hermodsson, is sometimes stretched
beyond comprehension. This is highly effective choral writing
which reminds me a little of the Estonian ‘sound’: moving, shifting
tonalities, a reluctance to overdo modernist ‘special effects’
but nonetheless creating a superbly fresh and ‘new’ sounding
piece.
The Academy Chamber
Choir re-appears in ‘Creation Betrayed’, this time from within
the substantial orchestral context of what the booklet describes
as a ‘grandiose ecological oratorio’. This is part of a series
of works using texts by Hermodsson, and Eriskon has been inspired
to create an atmospheric, dramatic evocation of the Creation,
with grimly knocking percussion, low strings and clusters, and
the added colours of harp and piano. The second part, ‘Re-paration’,
starts with a faux-naif children’s choir singing over a sub-Fauré
orchestral accompaniment. Spoken texts in Swedish usher in a
return to some of the stresses and tensions of the ‘Creation’
movement, and there are some beautifully lyrical moments. Fortunately,
all texts are translated into English. As a live performance
this lets the side down a little as regards comparison with
the quality of the other recordings, and as a composition it
is a good deal less structurally tight and logical than most
of the other pieces on this disc. In spite of out-of-tune pianos
and one or two dodgy choral moments there is however a great
deal to discover here.
‘Rain forest’ is
said by the composer to build largely on his own associations
with the sounds of nature. The piano is indeed used to rumble
over a fairly serial sounding series of note patterns, later
bursting out in extremes of range, but not making a huge impression.
‘Colours in Play’ for wind ensemble is more memorable, including
some fun Bernsteinesque rhythms. There is a strange contrast
between the banality of some of Erikson’s material, and the
energetic expressiveness of other moments. It is an eclectic
mix, but not an unattractive one.
In many ways the
central work on this disc is ‘Play’ for orchestra. Orchestral
mood and gesture appear in a number of guises, sometimes treading
a fine line between hackneyed film-music stereotype, but always
maintaining an edge-of-the-seat pitch of creative movement,
building expectation and wrong-footing the listener at the same
time.
This is an interesting
and stimulating issue, which serious collectors should consider
adding to their shopping list. In the end however, I was left
feeling that Erikson’s undoubted technical expertise might here
and there be covering for some creative weaknesses. The pieces
are individually far from weak, but Erikson’s personal fingerprints
prove more elusive the more one tries to pinpoint them, and
there is almost always a kind of open-ended structural question
mark which leaves the listener with less of a ‘wow!’ than a
‘huh?’
Dominy Clements
The Royal Academic Orchestra
and Academic Chamber Choir, Uppsala. Uppsala Musikklasser/Carl Rune Larsson
