Anders Hillborg

[ardcarp]

I was bowled over by a short piece of Hillborg's, O dessa ögon for soprano and strings. Rob Cowan played it on today's Essential Classics. It was sung by a FABULOUS soprano...and I'd like to know more about Hillborg, the piece and the soprano. Does anyone know more?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b070d2gb

...about 45 mins into the programme.

[DublinJimbo]

It's a BIS recording from 2014. Hannah Holgerssohn is the soloist, with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic conducted by Sakari Oramo. The piece dates from 2011, and was a commission from Uppsala University as a gift to Anders Wall on his 80th birthday.

The booklet has this to say about O dessa ögon:

[T]his spacious and emotionally concentrated song for soprano and string orchestra reveals [a] world in which Hillborg … resides comfortably. The text is by the well-known twentieth-century Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf, and it readily lends itself to the solitary and pensive world that Hillborg successfully evokes in this piece. The work begins with the sustained interval of a perfect fourth between the voice and high strings, which gradually saturates as the strings divide to fill in the open space; the strings act as prolonged reverberations of the soprano’s introspective melody. Dramatic ascending bass lines provide formal pillars while rising gestures in the vocal line lead to euphoric climaxes before toppling unfulfilled, regrouping, and climbing again. There is a predominant sense of courage being built up contained within the poem – facing oneself in the mirror – and the musical setting illuminates this beautifully, but ultimately ends where it began: with a descending perfect fourth in the soprano’s final melisma. The incessant longing for self-reflection is left unresolved.

About Hannah Holgerssohn (again, from the booklet): "The soprano Hannah Holgersson is active in classical opera, avant-garde and popular music. Anders Hillborg is one of the numerous contemporary composers with whom she has collaborated: others include Ingvar Lidholm, Steve Dobrogosz, Kjell Perder and Steve Reich. Her repertoire also includes Polly Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera (Pepusch), Maria in Bernstein’s West Side Story, the Princess in Tan Dun's Tea, the title role in Martin Jonsson Tibblin’s opera Eurydike and the soprano part in Ligeti’s Requiem. Hannah Holgersson appears regularly as a soloist with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Swedish Orchestra, ReBaroque, the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble, Kroumata and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir.
For further information please visit www.hannahholgersson.com."

[ardcarp]

Thanks for all that DJ! Casting around for a CD, I found this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hillborg-Holgersson-Stockholm-Philharmonic-Orchestra/dp/B015P76JC0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1455818358&sr=1-1

Hope she sings as well on this as on the BBC recording.

[Dave2002]

Liquid Marble is a piece originally scheduled for performance in 1997, but I think other events intervened.

Here is a more recent performance - http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct...9c_zQFx8Ltw7Qw

The Peacock Concerto for clarinet and orchestra was performed a number of years back at the Proms.

[DublinJimbo]

Thanks for all that DJ! Casting around for a CD, I found this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hillborg-Holgersson-Stockholm-Philharmonic-Orchestra/dp/B015P76JC0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1455818358&sr=1-1

Hope she sings as well on this as on the BBC recording.

That's the same recording. If you scroll down on that BBC page you linked to in your original post, you'll see the details listed, the same as in my reply (though they give the orchestra's name in Swedish).

[jayne lee wilson]

Thanks for all that DJ! Casting around for a CD, I found this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hillborg-Holgersson-Stockholm-Philharmonic-Orchestra/dp/B015P76JC0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1455818358&sr=1-1

Hope she sings as well on this as on the BBC recording.

If you like that, try....



Hillborg was initially obsessed with electronic music, but by way of Ligeti, Reich, Feldman, developed his own very varied orchestral style, which often sounds to me like spectralism (drifting, slow-evolving, often atmospheric & sensuous textures, vivid sense of nature - Dusapin, Murail etc) mixed with minimalism.
My personal favourites are King Tide (like a single, 13-minute minimalist crescendo), 11 Gates itself; and Sirens off the new album - possibly his best work yet...

[Serial_Apologist]

If you like that, try....



Hillborg was initially obsessed with electronic music, but by way of Ligeti, Reich, Feldman, developed his own very varied orchestral style, which often sounds to me like spectralism (drifting, slow-evolving, often atmospheric & sensuous textures, vivid sense of nature - Dusapin, Murail etc) mixed with minimalism.
My personal favourites are King Tide (like a single, 13-minute minimalist crescendo), 11 Gates itself; and Sirens off the new album - possibly his best work yet...

He sounds most interesting... and it's not often Spectralism gets a mention on this forum!

[ardcarp]

"Hauntingly beautiful. "

"We heard this in the car and thought how beautiful it was - piece and singer!"

Two people (one friend, one family) emailed me thus to describe the piece they'd heard, as I had, on Essential Classics [O dessa ögon].

[Oldcrofter]

For anyone who may be interested on the poem set by Per Anders Hillborg:

The poem by Gunnar Ekelöf comes from the second part of a trilogy published between 1965 & 1967 based on the Byzantine epic, Divan on the Prince of Emgion (Divan in this instance being a collection of poems in Persian or Arabic by a single author).

The second part, Sagan om Fatumeh (The Story of Fatumeh) is itself divided into two sections of 29 poems. In the first section, Fatumeh is young, beautiful and vivacious and I presume (but haven't been able to check yet) that the poem comes from this section.

The language of this poem is very direct and straightforward - and fortunately, easy to translate and, for non-Swedish speakers, easy to follow !

O dessa ögon Oh, those eyes
i mörkret, som lutar sig över mig In the dark, leaning over me
ett mörker av tusen ögon A darkness of a thousand eyes
och tusen hisnande mellanrum And a thousand breathtaking spaces/intervals
svartare än mina ögonbryn Blacker than my eyebrows,
än mina tinningars locker Than the curls on my temples.
Knappt syns som en ljusning You can only just make out
av en osynlig lampa the lustre on cheek and forehead
en glans över kind och panna as if from a lamp you can't see.

Det är din älskades ansikte It is your loved one's face
som orörlig böjer sig över ditt öde who motionless bends over your fate
Men varför så hårda ögon? But why such hard eyes ?

Jag vet ju att spegeln finns där I know for certain the mirror is there
och någon helt annan i spegeln And there is someone completely different in the mirror
En gång skall du vända dig mot den Some time, you will turn towards that mirror -
När du ser bort är också jag borta. When you look away, I too am gone.



Gunnar Ekelöf. Sagan om Fatumeh. Bonniers 1966

[Oldcrofter]

Sorry about the layout of the translation - I set it out with gaps between the Swedish and English but it's all closed up into single lines - tried to edit it with gaps but didn't work !

[ardcarp]

Thanks, Oldcrofter. Don't worry; I can think the gaps!