Music
O / Modern festival
Works by J Haydn, F Schubert, D Tabakova, P Eötvös, A Dvorak, J Hellman, A Schönberg, A Webern, A Berg and others
With Hugo Ticciato, Marmen Quartet, Johannes Hellman, Jordi Hjelm, Christoffer Sundqvist, Irina Zahharenkova, Leo Florin, Kristjan Randalu and others
Confidencen, Ulriksdal
Show more
It is Josef Haydn and the unaccustomed ear that is at the center of this year’s O / Modern – the festival that borrows John Cage’s motto “Invent the past. Revise the future. Live now ”.
On Thursday, they put an end to the great Austrian’s in his time immensely popular oratorio “The Seasons”. In English. As the original text, translated into German for Haydn’s case, soon enough re-anglified to suit the composer’s tonal language…
This is also how it works British-Swedish Hugo Ticciato’s festival, which carelessly arises between languages, genres and eras. Here, four clarinet pieces by Alban Berg can be seamlessly interleaved with improvisations on double bass and vivlira sneaked into the modernist Péter Eötvö’s “Music for New York”.
Monday’s both concerts, however, offered only one Haydn, but in return the best performance I heard from a Haydn quartet! Swedish violinist Johannes Marmén leads his London-based string quartet, which has only performed sparingly in Sweden. More Marmen Quartet is wanted after their sympathetic interpretation of Haydn’s “The Joke” or, as it is called in Swedish, “Gubbkvartetten”. Here neither old nor funny, but with an exact ear for what both Mme de Staël and Goethe wanted to listen to from four strings: the intelligent conversation.
Which can not be heard Anton Webern’s low-key intense string quartet from 1909. There is a lack of rhetoric – instead a microscopic study in timbres, furiously refined by the Marmen Quartet. On top of this subtlety, Arnold Schönberg’s chamber symphony felt almost porkily late romantic with its wildly heroic gesture.
Franz Schubert’s ultra-romantic “Winterreise” ends with the monotonous song about the lira player, sometimes interpreted as the liemann. But the vevlire virtuoso Johannes Geworkian Hellman opens up unimaginable, colorful musical worlds with his hurdy-gurdy.
Read more concert reviews and other lyrics by Camilla Lundberg