Rolf Martinsson – focusing on vocal music
London. The world premiere will be in Zürich under the direction of John Storgårds in January 2015. The work will also be heard twice in the Concertgebouw with Lisa Larsson as soloist during Martinsson’s residency in Amsterdam. Furthermore, Martinsson has been asked to compose yet another work for soprano and orchestra, to be performed by Larsson at the inauguration of the new concert hall Malmö Live in August 2015.
This autumn Rolf Martinsson will embark on his seasons as Composerin-Residence with both the Netherlands Philharmonic/Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. The international successes with his older works continue. At the same time a new tendency with a greater focus on vocal music can be discerned in Martinsson’s creativity, which above all is a result of his close collaboration with soprano Lisa Larsson. The first project that they had in common was the Orchestral Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson , which was originally written for mezzo-soprano but adapted by Martinsson together with Larsson for soprano. A further step in their collaboration was the chamber work Till skuggan av en verklighet (To the Shadow of Reality), which Larsson and the British Kreutzer Quartet premiered last year. The cooperation has also led to two new large-scale vocal works. First in line is Garden of Devotion, set to texts by Rabindranath Tagore, for soprano and string orchestra, which is being premiered in September by Musica Vitae. The work has already aroused international interest and further performances are scheduled with no less than seven orchestras. It will be followed by Ich denke Dein… for soprano and orchestra, a commission from TonhalleOrchester Zürich – jointly with Helsinki Philharmonic, Netherlands Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonia Orchestra
It is indeed evident that Martinsson has once again found a congenial musical partner in Lisa Larsson. He is of the opinion that the optimal collaboration between composer and soloist is founded on a relationship in which candour, sensitivity, flexibility and mutual respect are continually present, and he describes their working together in these words: “Larsson is a brilliant and devoted interpreter of my works. She has a keen musical intuition and a deep feeling for my tone language. Her curiosity and interest in creating ever new musical solutions have been a great source of inspiration for me”. Together they have had exhaustive discussions concerning the relationship between text and music, choice of text, phrasing, interpretation of
New opera project
Photo: Merlijn Doomernik
Photo: Mats Bäcker
Collaborating with Lisa Larsson
one as a composer has to relate to. I am very pleased and grateful that Lisa has wanted to work on the details. It has enriched my composing.” The two works are quite dissimilar. In addition to the choice of language, they are also different in that while the texts in Garden of Devotion were written by one author and taken from the same collection of poetry, the texts in Ich denke Dein… were written by three different authors – Rilke, Goethe and Eichendorff. In this case Martinsson and Larsson have by virtue of their selection created a unified, composite suite of poems. “We decided on a form in which three of the poems afford different perspectives on love, while the other two are depictions of nature”, says Martinsson. And he points out that as a composer he “had a feeling of devoutness stepping into the writing rooms of these poets”. It is not only the poems’ qualities in respect to language and content that have interested him, but also the culture that they represent. All texts selected have in common that they are taken from an epoch for which Martinsson has a strong attraction, namely, German Romanticism and the fin de siècle Symbolism of the early 20th century. The music of these epochs, especially, has long constituted a sounding board for Martins son’s musical world, and it is also discernible in the new works, which have been attired in a semitonal harmony characteristic of Martinsson.
Lisa Larsson
words, breathing and different aspects regarding vocal technique and voice idioms. These discussions have then become the point of departure for the concrete process of composition. “For Garden of Devotion I selected some poems by Tagore from the collection The Gardener, and after careful consideration I selected the German poems for Ich denke Dein”, says the composer and stresses that “the collaboration with Lisa has been characterised by a great wealth of detail that has almost surprised me. But if the instrument is in your body, as is the case with the voice, then there arises, in connection with the artistic work of conveying a feeling and a text, a great many details that
It is obvious that one can look upon these new vocal works as a kind of preliminary study for the new opera project that is just around the corner. Martinsson has a commission from the Royal Opera in Stockholm for a full-length opera. The work is to be based on Joseph Conrad´s short story Amy Foster. Much preparatory work has already been done and author Stephen Plaice is finished with the libretto. It is true that Martinsson has never written an opera before, but his experiences from the many solo concertos, which in many ways involve music-dramatic principles, stand him in good stead. And it is with confidence that he sets about composing in an opera form that is very much bound by tradition. “Much of my vocal music already has musicdramatic undertones”, says Martinsson, who looks forward to soon tackling this huge – but at the same time exciting and challenging – composition project. Staffan Storm More information: www.rolfmartinsson.com