In April this year (2009) the Stockholm Concert Hall arranged
a Composer Weekend devoted to B. Tommy Andersson. It was a fine
tribute to ‘one of Sweden’s most animated composer voices of today’
as Sofia Nyblom wrote in her review in Svenska Dagbladet.
He may be better
known as a conductor. According to his homepage a complete
list of his conducted works would comprise 873 works including
132 first performances. A great number of operas, ballets
and even operettas reveal a deep interest in music theatre
and I think it is right to say that theatricality is an important
ingredient in his own composing.
He started writing
music at an early age and the first work performed in public
was a Prelude and Fugue in F major, for organ in 1979
when he was fifteen. Since then his work-list has expanded
rapidly in various genres, but during the first half of the
1990s he composed very little due to his intense conducting
activities. The last decade has, on the other hand, been very
productive.
Not surprisingly
his oeuvre includes an opera – William, a fantasy on
William Shakespeare, commissioned by the Vadstena Academy
and premiered in 2006. The three piano pieces on this disc
are based on musical material from the opera and refer to
different episodes in the libretto. It is dedicated to the
choreographer and dancer Pontus Lindberg and the degree of
difficulty is adjusted to Lindberg’s capacity as a good amateur
pianist. The first piece, Secret Theatre, is rhythmic
and the third, Seductive Games, is lively and energetic,
as is proper for a dancer. In between Ganymede is a
moment of repose with the sounds of soft bells.
Satyricon
is also related to dance, though not originally intended to
be so. It is inspired by a novel by Gaius Petronius, an ancient
Roman author who died in 66 AD. It is not exactly programme
music, rather as Andersson puts it in his commentary ‘a concert
piece in the spirit of Petronius’s novel’. The subheading
‘Choreographic Poem’ has to do with a growing feeling Andersson
had during the composition process that it would be suitable
for dancing. He dedicated it to the memory of choreographer
and dancer Per Jonsson (1956–1998) whose work he had always
admired. Satyricon is in one movement but is divided
into four clearly differentiated parts. It opens with airy,
transparent music, lyrical and melodious, which grows in intensity.
Then follows a part that is rhythmic and energetic, repetitive
but stirring and suggestive. The third episode is soft and
restrained and rather melancholy, while the final segment
is aggressive but full of vitality. Not having read the novel
which the notes tell us is a ‘rather indelicate story [consisting]
of several amusing, passionate and odd episodes’, I can sense
the composer’s will to communicate. Without resorting to seductive
melodies and sweet harmonies his music is accessible and captivating.
His setting of
what is probably Shakespeare’s best known sonnet, Shall
I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day with its high-lying cantilena
for the sopranos is truly beautiful. It is worthy to set beside
Nils Lindberg’s setting of the same text some twenty years
ago, a work that quickly established itself as a standard
among Swedish choirs. The Swedish Radio Choir under Peter
Dijkstra retains the high standards we have been used to for
so many years. For the other choral piece, Kyssar vill
jag dricka, settings of some verses from The Song of Songs,
Andersson has used Arabian scales to underline the Oriental
background of the texts.
Influences from
another direction are met in Reflections, with references
to both John Dowland and Benjamin Britten. The melodic material
is based on Dowland’s song Wing’d with Hopes. The piece
is a vehicle for the superb Anders Paulsson and his soprano
saxophone. After a soft opening the solo part becomes ever
more intricate and Paulsson has few seconds of rest during
the twelve minutes playing time.
The longest and
also the earliest composition is the Concerto for horn
and orchestra, composed in 1993 but based on material
from an even earlier sonata. The first movement opens with
a theme that is very similar to Shostakovich’s famous ‘motto’.
It returns throughout the movement, which is rather romantic.
The beautiful Lento also has room for some virtuoso
flute solos. However the movement is predominantly a melancholy
soliloquy for the horn soloist. In the concluding Vivace
the ‘motto’ from the opening is heard again. Sören Hermansson
has long been a champion of the contemporary scene and has
premiered numerous works. His playing here is as spotless
as ever and with the composer conducting, as he also does
in Reflections, the authenticity cannot be questioned.
This varied and
communicative disc should win Andersson many new friends.
With its broad spectrum of styles and influences it should
appeal to listeners from various cultures. The technical standard
is admirable.
Göran Forsling
And Rob Barnett
writes:
B. Tommy Andersson's
name will be well known to Scandinavian music enthusiasts
as an repertoire-intrepid conductor. For example, he directs
the orchestra for the Bis recording of Nystroem's last two
symphonies and also the Sterling disc of Atterberg’s concertos
for piano and for violin. Here he is also revealed as a composer.
Reflections
is Andersson's 2003 Concerto for soprano saxophone and
orchestra. The soloist Anders Paulsson plays only the soprano
saxophone. The concerto is less romantic and more reserved
than the Horn Concerto. We are told that it is based on the
Dowland song My Thoughts are Wing'd with Hopes (1597).
Despite a speckle of key clatter one can appreciate this mercurial
and flighty work: Ariel at play in light and shadow - an elfin
supernatural.
Pieces for
Pontus are for Magnus Svensson's solo piano and are dedicated
to Pontus Lindberg on his 30th birthday. Secret Theatre
is a jerky volley of notes while Ganymede is marked
out by its starry slow-descending note pattern like Urmis
Sisask. The music is extracted from Andersson's opera William
based on the life of William Shakespeare.
I Would Drink
Your Kisses is a choral piece on words from the Song
of Solomon and redolent of the original locale in the
use of Arabian scales. It is not at all avant-garde, just
rich and strange. Speaking of Shakespeare again we come to
his Sonnet XVIII, Shall I compare thee which is also
for mixed choir. Over a sweetly-hummed murmur this is almost
Bantock-luxuriant and certainly sentimental. Very Edwardian.
The surgingly
romantic Horn Concerto began life as the 1985 Horn Sonata.
It was largely rewritten as a Concerto in 1993. It's a stirring
and turbulent work with no small insurgency of truculence.
The pregnant rainy tension of the Lento is carried
over into the Vivace which is bluffly Falstaffian,
furiously full of barbed euphoric character and rousingly
confident.
The supportive notes
are by Magnus Hagland with a substantial note by the composer
in relation to Satyricon. Speaking of which, Andersson's
conjuring of the atmosphere rather than the incidents of the Petronius
novel is phantasmally done. The score is delicate and luxurious
with super-rich harmonic tissue comparable at one moment with
Ravel's Daphnis at another with Bax's Springfire and
then again with the most densely sybaritic Szymanowski. This almost
expressionistic forest strikes an accommodation with dissonance.
At 5.33 there is an irruption of magnificent Barber-like melody.
‘Choreographic poem’ so we must not surprised by the possessed
dance at 6.30 or the riptide rhythmic ‘stings’ at 8:40 which keep
things moving. In the clinkery of anvil and the eruptive wildness
this music recalls Barber's Medea's Dance of Vengeance.
Ripping rhythmic brass figures and howling deep brass cut through
the textures. There is then a long melting falling away with a
profusion of solo lines which begin to be disrupted by rhythmic
explosions from 15:00 onwards. These blast and pulsate while rolling
brass fanfares rip and rap. Diaghilev would have loved this: Dukas’s
La Péri on steroids.
Rob Barnett
Sören Hermansson
(horn); Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra/B Tommy Andersson 
