CD REVIEW - Presentiment (BIS)
The productive master of orchestration Rolf Martinsson (f. 1956) is something of an outsider in his home country as well as in a wider perspective.
As far as finnish composers are concerned, a Kimmo Hakola in that mood is sometimes brought to mind, but Martinsson goes even further in his unconcealed emotionalism and inclination towards late romantic lush expression.
Martinsson, with presently over a hundred works on his opus list, sounds in fact almost like a swedish Korngold – with a touch of Walton between the verses – and the fact that he still hasn’t profiled himself as a film music composer is to say the least surprising.
The visual aspect is strongly present in the CDs first piece, the concert ouverture Open Mind (2005), whose title says something essential about Martinsson’s way of approaching music. And it is certainly symptomatic that A. S. In Memoriam for Strings(1999/2001) is written in memory of the hundredth anniversary of Schönberg’s most famous tonal piece, Verklärte Nacht.
The concert for orhcestra (2008), with quotes from all the other pieces on the CD, is not a traditional orchestra concert in the sense that it would aim to give room for the virtuosity of single parts but rather, like Magnus Lindberg’s piece with the same name, a symphony in disguise with sometimes obvious meditative qualities.
The strongest work on the CD is Orchestral Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson (2009/2011), where Dickinson’s protomodern aphoristic poems – of which one has given name to the CD – get a sometimes almost musical coloured sound with unmistakably american qualities that often leads the thought spontaneously towards Leonard Bernstein.
The song cycle is written for mezzo soprano and premiered by Anne Sofie von Otter, but there is also a version for soprano. Lisa Larsson performes a superbly well sounding and emotionally engaging interpretation, while Andrew Manze and Sakari Oramo (the Concert for Orchestra) are doing a genuinly thorough work with the probably foremost orchestra of Sweden today, the Royal Philharmonics.
