Just as many people talk about Nordic light, many have also asked whether there is a Nordic sound. The question may have several answers.
From the inside there may appear to be great differences between Norwegian dances, impassioned Swedish folk songs and gloomy Finnish symphonies. Art music developed simultaneously in all the Nordic countries with close ties to the national romantic movement, and even Nordic music composed in our own time is often coloured by a living folk music tradition. It may be these colours that unify Nordic music when seen from the outside. Folk music plays a major role in this programme compiled by Bjarte Engeset and the Swedish ensemble Dalasinfoniettan for the Bergen International Festival.
A tribute to the music
The concert opens with Tonerna (Visions), a song associated by many with Jussi Björling. Its brief text, which tells how music can provide relief for a heavy heart, was written by one of Sweden’s foremost intellectuals in the early nineteenth century. Erik Gustaf Geijer was a philosopher, composer, professor of history and a member of the Swedish Academy.
Music and poetry
After this seductive opening the ensemble expresses its further longings in the warm orchestral sound of Lars-Erik Larsson. In 1937 he was given a wide-reaching post in Swedish broadcasting. His tasks included conducting the Radio Orchestra, writing new music and producing music programmes for the radio. He developed several programme concepts combining music and poetry, and he selected three movements from one of them and entitled the work Pastoral Suite, which has become one of the most frequently performed pieces of music in Sweden. The first movement, Uvertyr (Overture), was written to the poem En dag (One Day) by Verner von Heidenstam; the second is built around a text by Oscar Levertin, and the third, a scherzo, is to the poem De två tonerna by Kerstin Hed.
The Nordic Countries for orchestra
After this instrumental poetry, miniatures inspired by the folk music of Norway and Sweden permeates Wilhelm Stenhammar’s Sentimental Romance from 1910. Stenhammar was in great demand as a pianist, composer and conductor alike, and his music expresses warmth and clarity. This romance is one of the first he composed after his decision to find a Nordic orchestral sound. It has been said to be saturated with midsummer memories.
Fiddles and dreams
After an interval and a folk tune from Dalarne – the Swedish Dales – we travel eastwards to Finnish music with mystical undertones. First we encounter a fiddler, just as Pehr Henrik Nordgren saw him in his work Pelimannimuotokuvia, a series of musical portraits of Finnish fiddlers. This is followed by Jean Sibelius’s Six Humoresques for Violin and Orchestra. These were first performed in 1919 alongside his fifth symphony. The first and third humoresques toy with traditional dance forms, while the second and fifth contain virtuoso passages that make considerable demands on the soloist. The fourth is calmer altogether, and this tranquil mood returns in the final humoresque. The Nordic summer night eventually concludes with Sibelius’s well-known Valse triste and one of his songs, which asks, ‘Was it a dream?’
Text: Hild Borchgrevink
English version: Roger Martin