Sweden – 2 May 2008

Friday evening we’d planned a get-together with Gary Graden and his wife Maria Södersten at their house in Nacka, partly to introduce my folks to some of our friends, partly just to have a good time! Included were Maria’s mother, Barbro; Margareta and Bertil Dimander, good friends of Birgit Hemberg, whom we’d met before (originally Birgit was going to come, but had to cancel); Birgit’s daughter Anna and her daughter Nena (Anna sings in Gary’s choir and we’ve met her on many occasions); and Linus and Stina and their two charming daughters (their youngest is just starting to walk—both sing in Gary’s choir and Linus is the choir president—we had a little bit of business to talk about, too). Of course, Gary and Maria’s two boys, Johan and Filip, were there as well.

Kathryn and Maria had planned the menu and Kathryn spent time beforehand prepping salad fixings, fruit and a great dessert (an English trifle). We also brought a lot of wine, so Kath had loaded three suitcases with wine and food for the taxi! Maria made appetizers, some gorgeous roasted potatoes and vegetables and Gary barbecued again—just fantastic. They also made a delicious punch with elderflower juice, mint and rum.

It was a terrific evening of conversation, eating, drinking, more eating, and a bit of music, too. We left around 11:30, the taxi dropping us off at the train station for a short walk home, before taking mom and dad to their home. I can’t imagine a nicer time—we owe thanks to Gary and Maria.

Most of the dinner party:



Maria and her mother, Barbro:



Gary jamming with his son, Johan:



Me and Gary:

Sweden – 26-27 April 2008

Saturday we went to a concert by Gary Graden’s St. Jacob’s Chamber Choir, with guest conductor Martina Batic, at Storkyrkan (the Cathedral). Martina, from Slovenia, is the winner of the Eric Ericson conducting competition in 2006 (the first was held in 2003, which Peter Dijkstra won, the next will be in October 2009). Masja Goundorina (who you may remember has been studying with Anders Eby and was language coach during my rehearsals of Rachmaninoff The Bells) did the choral preparation before Martina arrived this past week for the last few rehearsals.

The program opened with two pieces by the late renaissance composer Jacobus Gallus (originally from Slovenia, although he worked primarily in Vienna and Prague, also known as Jacob Handl), “Veni Sancte Spiritus” and “Subsannatores subsannavit Deus.” This was followed by the Martin Mass, in a very strong performance, shaped nicely by Martina. Finally, there were two works by the contemporary Slovenian composer Damijan Mocnik (sorry, I can’t find a way to write the proper diacritical marking over the c), “Hymnus Tertiae horae” and “Veni, Creatur Spiritus.” Both were interesting pieces, the second, based on the chant, calling for a larger group at the front of the church (which Gary led) and a smaller group from the back and sides led by Martina, particularly interesting. Mocnik was born in 1967 and I discovered he’d been a composer in residence on Orcas Island in Washington State last year (why didn’t I know about it?). An interview with him can be found here.

Martina was born in 1978, graduating from the Conservatory in Ljubljana in 2002, then going to the Hochschule in Munich for a diploma in choir conducting in 2005. Immediately after that she was offered the position of choirmaster at the opera in Ljlubljana, a full-time job she’s held since then. As part of winning the Ericson competition, she conducted a program with the Swedish Radio Choir last fall, and has been invited back for programs in the next two years.

Eric Ericson was also at the concert, so we had a chance to visit.



Also attending was Ingemar Månsson, who had the Hägerstens Motet Choir in Stockholm for years (Sven-David Sandström was a member of that choir for 20 years). He moved to Lund (in Skåne, in southern Sweden) and for some time has directed the Lunds Vocal Ensemble, which has won a number of prizes in European competitions. It was nice to see him again, too.

We were invited back to Gary and Maria’s house for a barbecue with the choir and Martina. Also along was an Australian conductor and teacher, Ingrid Leibbrandt, who’s been visiting and studying in Sweden since the mid-80’s. Ingrid wrote a book, On the Road to Paradise, which consists of interviews with Eric, Ingvar Lidholm, and others, and analyses of several seminal Swedish choral works (you can find a review of my book and Ingrid’s in the Summer/Fall edition of the American Choral Review here). I don’t have a copy yet, but will certainly get one. Ingrid is delightful and it was wonderful to meet her. She’s currently involved in a project with Eric of editing video footage of Eric rehearsing (she herself took more than 100 hours of such footage, following through a program from first rehearsal to performance). I absolutely hope she can get funding to put together this material in a form that can be easily accessible so that future generations can not only hear the results of Eric’s work, but can get a sense of how it is achieved.

Ingrid, Martina, and me:



The party itself was great fun, as are all parties at Gary and Maria’s house. Members of the choir brought whatever they wanted to barbecue and a variety of other salads, breads, desserts, wine, etc. They’re a fun group to be with and we’ve gotten to know a few of them fairly well, particularly after the project we did together at IFCM in Minneapolis and later in Uppsala in 2002—and of course, we just keep showing up at their concerts and parties!

The weather has begun to change—a little cooler, cloudier, and with a bit of rain (when Gary, Martina, Ingrid, Kathryn and I chose to take a walk down to the Baltic was the only time it really rained hard that afternoon!). My parents arrive on Wednesday for two weeks, so we hope there will be a bit more sun during that time.

Sweden - April 2-7

Last week was mostly taken up with rehearsals with RK. As outlined earlier, Tu-Wed-Thurs were working on Verdi Quattro Pezzi Sacri (what gorgeous pieces and RK can make a wonderful sound on them) and the Pizzetti Requiem (another gorgeous piece--mostly review and help for those 4 or 5 singers who didn't do the Pizzetti on their recent production with the Latvian Radio Choir, plus giving them Peter's markings).

Rehearsals went generally well, although for whatever reason the men struggled with the opening of the Te Deum, particularly singing it in tune. Since on Wednesday I let the men go early so I could work for the last half hour on Laudi alla Vergine, I let the women go early on Thursday to work with the men on the opening. Better, but not yet where it should be. I'll have one more rehearsal on May 14 (a long way off) on this repertoire before they head for Holland to do it with Nederlands Kamerkoor and Peter Dijkstra.

Friday was rehearsal on Werle's trees and Sandström's April och Tystnad. The Sandström is gorgeous, slow (except for one short section), and was great fun to do, since I hadn't conducted it before. If you don't know the Werle, do get to know it! You can find Eric Ericson's recording here. It's a setting of 4 ee cummings' texts for choir, octet, and baritone solo, virtuosic and great fun. Werle worked for a period as a dance-band pianist and his knowledge of this "American" style is integrated wonderfully into the piece. It's difficult, though, and we spent a lot of time repeating some sections to get pitches and ensemble down. There are still a few places needing work, but hopefully we got a lot done for this program, which Peter will begin rehearsing this week.

Also on Friday evening, I went to the airport to meet Kathryn, who was scheduled to get in at 9:30 PM, but was delayed until around 10 PM. Given the fact that she was on British Air going through the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow, which had a disastrous opening the week before, we were both happy that she came that close to being on time and with all her luggage! She'd slept for about 6 hours on the Seattle to London leg, so was surprisingly rested.

Saturday (after a fairly lazy morning) we went to another Sjung Med! (Sing With!) concert at St. Jacobs with Gary Graden. This was an expansion into new repertoire of the same group that has been doing the Folkjul concerts I wrote of earlier. Again, it was organist Gunnar Idenstam, violinist Lisa Rydberg, with Gary conducting an octet from the Chamber Choir. Most of the music was Bach (some organ music, the Bourée from the violin partita in E major, "Zion hört die Wachter singen" from Cantata 140, several chorales from Johannespassion, a couple of minuets, etc.), some familar hymns with the audience singing, and a great improvisation by Idenstam at the end. Gary leads the singing with infectious joy and the audience (the church probably 2/3ds full) was really responsive.

Lisa is a wonderful player (as I'd mentioned before, besides her specialities in folk music, she also plays baroque violin with various groups around Sweden) and her takes on Bach offer the kind of HIPP (Historically informed performance practice) one might expect (although on a modern fiddle and bow), but with the addition of folk influences and ornamentation. She has a website, but it's fairly out of date. Gunnar Idenstam is a wonderful player and, as you'll see from his website, very busy!

At any rate, a wonderful hour or so of music.

Sunday was another relatively slow day, but then Gary picked us up around 5 to go out to their home for a walk and dinner. The four of us took a great walk around the neighborhood (which is close by an arm of the Baltic Sea) then came back in time to go pick up their youngest son, Philip, who had a football game and practice that day. Their older son, Johan, was busy at home editing some electronica music that he'll be doing at a club in Oslo with two other friends. Maria made a fantastic soup, which we all had with crayfish to spread on top, a salad and wonderful bread. It was followed with a dense, gooey, chocolate torte, fruit and ice cream. Decadent doesn't begin to describe it! At any rate, we had a marvelous evening with good friends, conversation and food.

Monday was another slow day, with some score study and a few errands. One of the errands was to go to the train station to buy tickets for our visit to Kathryn's youngest sister, Heidi, husband Trygve, and children Elisabeth and Christoffer, in Kristiansand, Norway. We leave Thursday and come back Monday--not a long enough visit, but the time we could afford, given other commitments. It'll be a great time.

Back in Sweden – 29 March 2008

Well, I’m back!

Wednesday, after several meetings Mireille Rijavec took me to the airport for a 9:20 PM flight to London (Heathrow) and then on to Stockholm. I don’t know that I’d do a flight at that time again, if I can avoid it—I don’t sleep well on planes, so it essentially meant a night with very little sleep. The flight itself was fairly smooth, I didn’t have to change terminals at Heathrow (it’s still an ugly and confusing place, luckily not a long layover), and I got into Stockholm on time Thursday evening. After collecting luggage, it was around 6 PM when I got a taxi into town. The sun was about to set on a gorgeous day, a fair change from when I was in Stockholm last on Feb. 9 and it got dark just a bit earlier!


I got settled and to sleep around 10:30 PM and awoke promptly at 3:30 in the morning. Puttered around, did email and a little score study, then got another hour and a half of sleep before finally getting going. Friday was a day of errands: laundry (pretty much all my clothes were dirty after two weeks in Edmonton), shopping for food and a few other essentials, and walking a bit in the beautiful sunshine (temps around 5 Celsius or 42 Fahrenheit) to get acclimated to the new time zone—still feeling jet-lagged.

Saturday I awoke at 6:30 after getting to bed at 12:30, again puttered around for awhile, but this time went back to bed and crashed, not getting up (other than waking up several times and going right back to sleep) until 1 PM. I hope I’m caught up on sleep now!

Gary Graden had a concert at St. Jacobs at 3, so I made it there to hear part of the Rachmaninov Vigil, along with organ and piano improvisations by Mattias Wager. Gary opened with the first two movements from the side of the church, followed by an organ improvisation, during which the choir moved to the center. Each of the pieces following had either an organ or piano improvisation in between them (Mattias moved to the front of the church in the middle to do piano improvs, then back to the loft for the last two improvisations. Gary’d chosen to do movements 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 14. For both numbers 6 and 7 the choir moved into the aisles, surrounding the audience.

The choir sang very well, as I would have expected. It took me awhile to get into the improvisations—not that they weren’t good and interesting, it’s just that they pulled me away from the world of the Vigil (and of course, just having conducted the entire Vigil, it was very much in my mind). Around mid-way through my brain seemed to “accept” the idea and it was fine. Still, I’d probably rather hear just the Vigil!

I stopped by the reception briefly to greet a few friends in the choir, plus composer Bo Hansson. I didn’t stay long, as I’m still a bit tired and wanted to get a bit of dinner before going home. The day has turned a bit gray and there were even a few drops of rain on the walk home, but a pleasant temperature, even a little warmer.

I have music to prepare for my first rehearsals back with the Radio Choir on Tuesday, but will say more about that in a couple days.

Sweden – February 3/4, 2008

Saturday
This was a St. Jacobs /Gary Graden /Urmas Sisask weekend, and a delightful one.

Urmas Sisask is an Estonian composer, not nearly as well known (even in Estonia) as his other countrymen such as Tormis and Kreek. Born in 1960, he graduated in composition from the Tallin Conservatory in 1985, but his most important developments happened in 1987-88, when on his own he was studying Gregorian chant, early polyphony, dance rhythms from the renaissance, early baroque monody, madrigals from the 16th century, and the music of Tormis and Pärt. Combined with his love of astronomy, he developed a theoretical system that gave him a “planetary scale.” Finally, this came down to five pitches: F#, G#, A, C#, and D (he later discovered, to his surprise, that it is identical to the Japanese Kumayoshi mode). In 1988 he composed his Gloria Patri, which consists of settings of 24 Latin texts for choir and vocal quartet.

Saturday night’s concert consisted of 18 of these 24 hymns, in a concert lasting a little more than an hour. Gary performed it with an octet (of which he was a member), rather than a larger choir, which worked fantastically from the standpoint of tuning (they were seated in a semi-circle, using music stands with stand lights). Since the music is primarily 4-part, most of the lines were doubled, except for more obvious solo lines. This was accompanied by a series of slides projected on a screen at the front of the church of gorgeous images of galaxies and star clusters taken from the Hubble telescope. The effect was wonderful, particularly since the concert started at 3 PM with ambient light from outside the church gradually turning to total darkness by the end of the performance. It was meditative and inspiring.

The music itself is minimalist, perhaps closest to Pärt, but still its own, unique style. There’s a lot of repetition of short phrases and all the pitches are limited to the scale listed above (Gary says for tuning purposes, they think of most of the music as in f# minor, with some pieces more clearly D major). The early music influences are obvious, with some Gregorian lines, a fugue, a passacaglia, Venetian school double choir, and some with dance rhythms.

The performance was terrific: wonderful sound, tuning, dynamic shape, and drama, within the limits of the music. The entire atmosphere worked together, the ambiance and great acoustics in the church, the projections of the galaxies on the screen, the change from outside light to darkness—and midway through the piece you could also sense that the audience had become “entrained,” tuned together through the music (there were about 300 present). Having done Pärt’s Passio (particularly in one performance at St. James Cathedral in Seattle where the clergy followed the Stations of the Cross during the performance) and Ivan Moody’s Passion and Resurrection in Edmonton, I know it’s not easy to create such an atmosphere, to allow the audience to enter that particular world. Very magical.

Afterwards, we went with Gary and a few of the singers to an Italian restaurant not far away. It had begun to snow during the concert, so we walked through the falling snow to the restaurant. They couldn’t seat all of us at the same table, so Gary, his wife Maria, and Kathryn and me sat together with Urmas. Urmas was a little shy at first, I think partly because he doesn’t speak English or Swedish (and we certainly don’t speak Estonian), so we communicated in German. He gradually became more and more animated, so one could get a true sense of his excitement for his work, for looking at the stars, and his impish sense of humor. We talked about the differences between performing with the full choir and a small ensemble and he said the fifths (and his eyes sparkled as he demonstrated the effect) “buzzed,” they were so in tune. Quite simply, a delightful time getting to know him a bit better and enjoying our wonderful friends. Walking back through the falling snow just added to the magic.

Sunday
This afternoon’s concert was a solo piano performance by Urmas of his own music, the same slides providing a visual accompaniment. He gave program notes before each piece (in Estonian, of course) with Jaan Seim translating. Jaan is a long-time singer in EEKK and currently the choir’s president—he’s also Rektor (principal) of the Estonian school in Stockholm. Urmas’s piano music is varied and based around his experience of the planets and galaxies. Urmas had said the night before that he’s not a professional pianist, but he’s accomplished. He often “conducted” (the music, the piano, the universe?) with his free hand, and created some quite interesting musical effects. In a few pieces he played inside the piano as well. There is still evident the influence of early music, but the music is clearly conceived for the piano. His sense of humor was also evident, particularly near the end. In one of the pieces, which he said demonstrates the notes present in the universe that one cannot hear, be began with his piano bench far to the left of the keyboard, “playing” in the air. He gradually moved the bench to the right, first playing just the right hand of the two short phrases in the lowest register of the piano, gradually moving up the keyboard, octave by octave, until he was on the right side of the keyboard, again “playing” in the air. He gave three encores, the first a neo-baroque piece, quite lovely. The second, called “Big Bang” (he gave the title in English) was a massive cluster, which he let die away . . . then jumped up with a grin and bowed. The final “encore” consisted of him sitting down seriously at the keyboard, pausing for a moment, gently closing the lid, then jumping up with a grin again for a bow. The smaller audience (about 100) loved the performance. I heard lots of Estonian afterward in people greeting Urmas, but lots of Swedes, too. His small number of piano CDs sold out rather quickly, so Kathryn and I didn’t get there in time.

As I’ve said before, Gary does some of the most creative and interesting work you’ll see and hear anywhere. It was great fun to be a part of it.

Sweden, 5/6/7 January 2008

Saturday
I met Gary Graden at St. Jacobs at 3 PM for a concert by the new Youth Choir there. Jacobs got some extra money for special projects from the Swedish Church, to include the formation of a youth choir. Mikael Wedar, an energetic young conductor who teaches at the high school on Kungsholmen (my neighborhood—or should I say, Gunilla’s!), leads the choir. These are post-high school students, ranging from age 18-20 or 21. They started with 13 singers in the fall and now have about 30. The program was essentially Christmas music—carols and traditional songs in a variety of arrangements, most in Swedish, but also one of Alfred Burt’s carols, two arrangements by Jonathan Rathbone and Gene Puerling’s arrangement of Silent Night. The “odd man out” was Eric Whitacre’s Cloudburst—a good piece, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how it fit in the program! There was also some singing along with the audience. The choir’s OK, not spectacular, but it should continue to grow as everyone continues working together.

Besides chatting with Gary and Mikael afterwards at the reception, I talked with Anders Åstrand, one of the percussionists who played in the Whitacre--and if you look at one of last year’s Swedish blogs, part of the WÅG trio (Anders, Gary and an organist) who gave an improvisatory concert at Jacobs. Anders is a composer and has his own percussion group and does lots of interesting work. He’s also written a choral piece that he’ll send me.

Sunday
Sunday morning brought a bit more snow, but much warmer temperatures, right around freezing—a fairly relaxed day, spending time catching up on email and doing some listening. Gary gave me a copy of his new CD, Folkjul (Folk Christmas), which comes from Christmas concerts at St. Jacobs that evolved over several years, arrangements worked out/improvised by organist Gunnar Idenstam, folk violinist Lisa Rydberg, and two folk singers, Sofia Karlsson and Emma Härdelin, along with the choir: just one more example of Gary’s creativity and love of collaboration. Idenstam is classically trained (winning the Grand Prix de Chartes in 1984, a major improvisation competition), but also works regularly in the genre of folk music, particularly with Lisa Rydberg. As composer/improviser he says he mixes art music, folk music and symphonically oriented rock music—I’d like to hear one of his recitals! Rydberg is the only violinist to graduate from the Royal College of Music with degrees in both classical and folk music (and regularly works as a baroque violinist as well).

As you can imagine, this isn’t a “choir” album (there I go betraying my age—excuse me, CD--"album" is a little dated). It’s a mix of organ improvisation, music for organ and violin, choir and violin, violin and soloist, and all the permutations in between. It ends with quite the arrangement of Veni, veni Emmanuel, with one of the solists doing some “kulning,” which is a singing style that evolved when the cows needed to be called home—notes in the stratosphere, but not sung in a “classical” way! It’s really wonderful, interesting music—although I don’t think you’ll find carols you can put on next year’s Christmas concert! If you have any interest in this from my description, though, buy the CD. It’s worth it. You’ll find it on the BIS label (from Archiv Music, cheaper than Amazon!).

At six PM I went to a performance of the 2nd half (parts 4, 5, and 6) of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, sung by the Motet Choir at Maria Magdalena Church, conducted by Ragnar Bohlin. It was very good performance with good soloists, particularly the soprano, choir, and the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble—which was good, especially the valveless horns and trumpets.

Ragnar is primarily in the US now as conductor of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. I met him in San Francisco last June when I was doing a concert there and he had just begun his work in SF. From all accounts (and I didn’t hear this from Ragnar), things are going very well and Michael Tilson-Thomas entrusted him with conducting Messiah this year, which got excellent reviews. He’ll also do Poulenc’s Figure Humaine (one of the great and challenging a cappella pieces of the last century) with the 30-voice professional core, plus 50 or 60 more singers from the chorus this spring. He’s been at Maria Magdalena since 1995 and comes from a prominent singing/conducting family. His mother, Eva Bohlin, has led many fine and prizewinning choirs, and his grandfather, Set Svanholm, was a great singer and colleague of Swedish tenor Jussi Björling, and also led a family singing group, the Svanholm Singers (and was for many years choir director at St. Jacobs—just one more connection in the small Swedish choral world). Ragnar was home for an extended visit. His wife is a cellist in the Opera Orchestra and they have two young children, so for the time being the family is at a distance.

It would be interesting to know if the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble has crossover membership with the Stockholm Baroque Orchestra that played last year for Anders Eby’s B Minor Mass (I’ll see if I can find out). I don’t know how big a group of period instrument players there are in Stockholm, but certainly there are some very good ones. The Drottningholm group started some 30 years ago for productions at the opera house at the summer palace (Drottning means Queen). The 400-seat opera house was opened in 1766 and the stage machinery, designed by the Italian, Donato Stopani, is still intact and it includes a wave machine, thunder machine, and a flying chair which is often used for deus ex machina effects. After the assassination of King Gustavus III in 1792 (which is the basis of the Giuseppe Verdi opera, Un ballo in maschera), the theatre was forgotten (and therefore preserved). In 1920 it was restored with the addition of electric light, which today is designed to flicker like candles. It re-opened on 19th August 1922 and has been used since for productions in period style. In the summer of ’90 I was able to attend a performance of The Abduction from the Seraglio (with the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble in the pit), which was marvelous. Seating is a bit uncomfortable, however, since you sit on wooden bleacher-style bench seats with no back! If you want to see the theatre and some of the machinery (well, the copies of it they now use), rent the Ingmar Bergman film of Mozart’s Magic Flute—it’s a delightful, quirky production (what would you expect, with Bergman directing?), sung in Swedish, with a very young Håkan Hagegård singing Papageno. Oh . . . and the conductor just happens to be Eric Ericson.

Speaking of Eric, he and his wife Monica were also at the concert, along with several of Monica’s sons. In 1989, my first visit to Sweden, I sublet her son Nils’ apartment and in the summer of 1990, when I did the bulk of my dissertation research, I sublet one of her other sons, Erik’s apartment—so it was nice to see them again. I’ll have lunch at Eric and Monica’s on Tuesday, so will catch up much more with them then.

Also singing in the concert was Gunnar Andersson (brought in as an extra tenor), who was for many years producer for the Radio Choir. We’ll also find time to meet.

Monday
It's much warmer today and almost all the snow is gone.

I spent nearly two and a half hours at the “phone house” store trying to get a wireless modem for my computer—running down to the hotel and paying 60kr (almost $9.50 USD) for two hours of access isn’t either handy or cost effective! Most of the time was spent trying to get the system to work on my Mac, only THEN to discover that to get a contract I have to have a Swedish personalnummer (like a social security number) and evidence of regular pay in Sweden. Argh!

I then met Gary Graden for lunch and explained my frustrating morning. He very kindly offered to sign up for me, which we did, so now I’m in Gunilla’s apartment putting this post on the blog. Thank you, Gary!

Gary’s an American who’s lived in Sweden since ’84 or so. He first came to study with Eric Ericson, which he did, along with singing in Eric’s Chamber Choir for a good number of years. He married a Swede, his beautiful wife, Maria, and they have two boys—so he’s never looked back. When I first met him in ’89 or ’90 he had the choir at Adolf Fredriks Gymnasium (or high school) and had started a youth choir at St. Jacobs. When Per Borin left as music director at Jacobs, Gary took over and the youth choir morphed into the current St. Jacobs Chamber Choir. He’s just heading to Hamburg, where he’ll do a prep rehearsal for the Nord Deutsche Rundfunkchor for Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht. They’ve already performed the work, so he’s just doing one rehearsal, then hanging around for the orchestra rehearsals and three concerts, one in Hamburg, one in Lübeck, and I’m not sure where the other one is. Anyway, a long way to travel to do one rehearsal, but interesting, I’m sure!

The rest of the day will be spent catching up on email and some score study. More in a few days.

Stockholm 2007 - Weeks 5 & 6

March 12, 2007

Hi all,

Well it's been a good two weeks since I last wrote, but impossible for us to imagine that we have just one week left.

Our week in Kristiansand, Norway with Kathryn's sister and her family was a wonderful break. Amazingly, there was over a meter and a half of snow (over four and a half feet), a meter that fell before we left Stockholm and the rest over the next few days. Incredible! Heidi has lived in Kristiansand for 20 years now and had never seen such snow.

Kathryn's cold got worse, but at least we weren't doing a lot--visiting, eating, and walking into and around town once each day.

One evening was a dinner with Rolf Gupta, the conductor of the orchestra in Kristiansand (Heidi works in the administration), his son Petter (who is Christoffer's age--they both play guitar, so they were busy upstairs playing blues or working on Jimi Hendrix riffs), his assistant Line and her son Gabriel, who's five or six. Rolf is extremely bright, a terrific musician (child prodigy pianist and a conducting student of Jorma Panula, see below) who conducted the Radio Orchestra in Oslo for three years and is just about to head out to Holland and Switzerland to guest conduct, so it was a fun evening.

Another evening we got a preview of Trygve's duo piano recital (which was this past week) with his new duo-partner Karina Lervik, who's a master's student of his from Russia and a very fine pianist. The program included Grieg, Piazzola, Poulenc and a virtuosic sonata by Rachmaninoff. Great to hear Trygve enjoy working with his new partner so much in a beautiful program.



By the last few days the temperatures were above freezing, a little bit of rain, and the snow beginning to melt.

We came back Friday--a long trip, leaving at 9 AM, a 2-hour layover in Oslo (when we saw our nephew Kaare Øystein--Trygve's oldest son from his first marriage--and separately, his wife Ane, both of whom were nice enough to take a little time off work to visit us at the train station), then got back to the station in Stockholm shortly after 10 PM. The weather was much milder and almost all the snow is gone.

Saturday was a "catch-up" day of shopping and laundry, then Sunday welcomed us back to our usual Stockholm schedule with a bang. First, we had a delicious brunch at the apartment of a good friend of Gunilla's (whom we've met before in both Stockholm and Tacoma), Christina Björk, and her partner Erling Sandström. Christina is the head of the educational division between Swedish Television and Radio, and Erling is a television producer for the Save the Children foundation, just back from Yemen. Extraordinarily bright people and a great time.

From there, we had twenty minutes to walk quickly across the bridge and Gamla Stan (Old Town) back to St. Jacobs for a Mass at 3 PM. Gary's choir was doing an interesting mass--Missa Lorca--by Corrado Margutti, a young (b. 1974) Italian composer, commissioned by the St. Jacob's Chamber Choir. It sets texts by Lorca in place of the usual Latin ordinary and uses themes from Monteverdi's Missa in illo tempore. The premiere was last November, along with the Monteverdi Mass on which it's based, which Gary did by dividing the choir into one-on-a-part ensembles, each doing a different movement. The mass Sunday, with all psalms, hymns, liturgy, sermon and communion, was about an hour and three quarters long, but really enjoyable.

The day was capped off by a dinner party at Birgit Hemberg's with 11 people, including Gary Graden and his wife Maria. Birgit was for many years the editor in chief of Allt om mat (All about food), the leading cooking magazine in Scandinavia and, although retired, just finished co-editing the latest edition of Bonnier's cookbook, which would be the Nordic equivalent of the revised Joy of Cooking, so you can imagine the dinner was spectacular. What a way to be welcomed back to Stockholm!

Monday was my first day at the Musikhögskolan (MH or Royal College of Music). The Finnish conducting pedagogue, Jorma Panula, is now Professor of orchestral conducting in Stockholm, and I wanted to see him work. For those who don't know him, Panula was a legend at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where from 1973-94 he trained the most successful generation of conductors that any one teacher has probably had: Esa-Pekka Salonen (LA Philharmonic), Sakari Oramo (who succeeded Simon Rattle in Birmingham), Jukka-Pekka Sarastre (who conducts the Stockholm Philharmonic this week and recently became leader of the Oslo Philharmonic), and Osmo Vänskä (who's in Minnesota), among others.

Cecilia Rydinger-Alin met me at the school and introduced me to Panula--Celilia teaches orchestral conducting part-time at MH and also administers the program (more about her later in the week). They are lucky to have a great relationship with the Radio Orchestra and also the orchestra in Norrköping, so the conductors in the masters and diploma program get to conduct professionals fairly regularly. I don't know of another place where this happens in quite the same way. Because of Panula, the school draws an international group of outstanding and experienced conducting students. This week, two of the conductors are doing the Nielsen Flute and Clarinet concertos with a chamber orchestra from the Radio Orchestra (strings 4-4-3-3-2 + necessary winds, brass, and percussion), plus other conductors doing a few other works.

The class at MH in the morning was with the solo flutist, a pianist playing reduction, Jorma playing whatever he felt was necessary from a minature score at another piano, and two of the conducting students (both Finnish) playing violin. Unfortunately, the clarinetist had a flight delay, so they only worked on the flute concerto today, plus another piece by Sibelius, with two different students. The conductor of the Flute concerto is a Korean woman, who'd previously studied in Berlin for four years and just began this year with Panula. However, it's not at all sure she'll be able to continue, as she just won the Solti competition and was also appointed assistant conductor (for two years) to James Levine with the Boston Symphony!

Panula doesn't make many comments, but stops if he feels she's missed something or has a tempo wrong. After a shortened class, I chatted with Cecilia a bit about the program and then made my way to the Radio, where the rehearsal was held in the late afternoon. The conductor did an excellent job and the flutist (a young professional) was excellent. Here, Panula makes even fewer comments, occasionally saying a word or two, allowing the student for the most part to run the rehearsal. The rest of the time was spent with other conductors, including one of the Finnish conductors who was working on a new piece (rather difficult) by a student composer at MH.

Tuesday was my 2nd day at MH, this time to visit Anders Eby's class (the masters students). Once a week they work with a paid vocal ensemble of 16, which includes 6 members of the Radio Choir, some of Eric's Chamber Choir, and others. It makes for an excellent and very quick ensemble with which to learn, to say the least. There are only 4 in the class, this year all non-Swedes (Norway, Germany, Slovenia, and Russia)--that's not unusual for Anders' class, which often has foreigners outnumbering Swedes. Anders also does lots of masterclasses throughout Europe (and shortly, in Beijing), so that's part of the reason so many come to Stockholm. Currently, they're working towards a concert on Thursday, so this is the last rehearsal other than an hour's dress rehearsal before the concert.

The level of the class is good, although not spectacular, and they're working this time on all fairly recent music, most by Swedish composers, including Anders Hultqvist, Kjell Perder (who was there to listen to his pieces) and two student composers (who were also there). Certainly this ensemble can do this kind of music in a very short period of time, so these conductors get experience with a repertoire that few American or Canadian conducting students could get in the same amount of time.

After the class Anders and I had lunch together and a good chance to talk more. He's been Professor at MH since 1994 and has an excellent perspective on the situation in Sweden--and says he is more optimistic than he was 5 years ago. I'll say a bit more about that later when I say something about current conditions of choral music in Sweden. It was a great discussion, however, including questions about (and greetings to) Pro Coro, since Anders is a past Artistic Director and guest conducted PC a year and a half ago.

Kathryn took the day to go to Haga Park, where she visited a really lovely butterfly house and Japanese garden, King's pavilion, etc.

Together we went Tuesday evening to a rehearsal at Konserthuset with OD and the Stockholm Philharmonic of Sibelius's Kullervo. As he's done for about 20 years, Anders Andersson did vocal warmups for the choir. Anders does very interesting vocalises with an intensely musical approach. Someone should bring him to North America for sessions at an ACDA or ACCC conference, regional convention, or perhaps an individual workshop. When rehearsals are in Uppsala, he also gives some voice lessons to members of OD (paid for by the choir).

Folke Alin then began the rehearsal, working on several spots (particularly on the Finnish, since it's difficult and calls for quite a different choral sound than Swedish) before Jukka-Pekka Sarastre came in for a brief piano rehearsal. At one point Folke asked for "ett Finnskt forte" (I think you can translate yourself). Then they went into the hall to rehearse with orchestra and soloists. Jukka-Pekka is an extraordinary conductor and knows this work cold ( he recorded the complete works of Sibelius twice with the Radio Symphony in Helsinki), and of course as a Finn, the text is also natural for him. He was in the same conducting class of Jorma Panula as Esa-Pekka Solonen and Sakari Oramo--it would have been daunting to be (one of) the "other" student(s) in that class! The orchestra and soloists were great and OD sounded very good, although Folke was a bit upset, saying they were missing almost 20 members tonight and he was afraid Jukka-Pekka would be disappointed. We'll hear the concert on Thursday, so will say more then.

Wednesday I spent some time at the Radio working on music for next week's rehearsals with the Radio Choir, while Kathryn went to the Asian Art Museum, a small but very high quality museum.

That evening we went back to Uppsala again, this time to attend a rehearsal of Cecilia Rydinger-Alin with her long-time choir (since 1988), Allmänna Sången. This is one of the oldest choirs in Uppsala, originally one of the student male choirs (as was OD), eventually becoming a mixed choir. Robert Sund preceeded Cecilia as conductor. The choir is close to 50 members and quite young, from 18-35 with an average age of about 25 or so, and changing a quarter or so of its membership each year (much like a college/university choir in North America). It's a very good amateur choir and have won several big European competitions. Tonight one of Eric's Chamber Choir's baritones, Ove Petterson, was working with the choir on vocal technique, so he did a long warm-up (about 35 minutes) and then Cecilia had him occasionally make comments during the rehearsal. They were working on one of the Stenhammar's 3 Choral Ballads, Rautavaara's Die Erste Elegie (which is challenging for almost any choir), a fun folk song setting by the Japanese composer Matsushita, and Bach Singet dem Herrn. As Cecilia said, they're about half way through the rehearsal period, so have some things well in hand and on others are still struggling--all of us know exactly what that's like! After rehearsal, we went back on the train with Cecilia and Ove and had a great conversation. Ove was in the Conservatory Chamber Choir with Eric when they were at PLU's summer workshop in 1988 and I've seen him in Eric's chamber choir on most of my other visits, although we'd never really sat down and talked. Cecilia I first met when Eric's choir was at PLU in 1984 (at the end of my first year there), but I really noticed her in 1987 when the Conservatory Chamber Choir was at IFCM in Vienna and she did a warm-up and rehearsal with the choir. Her conducting and music-making was SO musical and intense, it was great fun to watch. After finishing her diploma (master's degree level--there is no doctorate, but performance-wise it meets or exceeds US/Canadian doctorates) in choral conducting with Eric, she was (I believe) the first woman accepted into the orchestral conducting program. Following that she began a good free-lance career conducting both orchestra and opera. Since taking the position at MH (considered a 60% position), however, she does less free-lance work. She and Folke also have 3 children, 16, 14, and 6, so their lives (besides his work with OD Folke is one of the conductors and repetiteurs for the Royal Opera house) are full, to say the least. At any rate, it was simply great fun to connect again and watch her work.



Thursday was errands and score study during the day, but that evening we went to the Philharmonic concert. All I can say is WOW! What a terrific program and great concert. The first half was Stenhammar's Excelsior! (an overture about 15 minutes long) and Sculpture by Magnus Lindberg (about 25 minutes long). Lindberg is one of several interesting and successful Finnish composers (b. 1958) and this piece was written for the opening of Disney Hall for the LA Phil and Esa-Pekka Solonen, and dedicated to Frank Gehry, the architect of the hall (and also the Experience Music Project, for Seattleites reading this). It's a fascinating piece, written for a smaller string section (often playing divisi), quadruple winds, 4 trpts, 4 trmb, two tubas, lots of percussion, two pianos and two harps. Lindberg has a great orchestral imagination and the piece really "works." The orchestra (and Jukka-Pekka) gave a great performance of both pieces. After intermission was Sibelius' Kullervo, about 80 minutes long. Well, the orchestra just plain played the hell out of it (it's not easy) and OD sounded magnificent (and quite Finnish--very different than their usual sound--I can only imagine that Jukka-Pekka was very happy with them). The soloists were both Finnish and sang from memory: Jorma Hynninen was the baritone and Lili Paasikivi the mezzo. Both were excellent, but Lili was amazing--I'd go to hear her sing anything, anytime. Jukka-Pekka's conducting is dramatic, big, but always clear and always towards musical ends. Great fun to watch him. At any rate, a great evening.

Friday showed your correspondent isn't always too bright. I had the Vokalensemble from MH's concert listed on Friday on my calendar and, oddly, couldn't find them at MH! Of course, the concert was on Thursday and somehow I wrote it down wrong. Oh well. Kath (being more intelligent) spent the afternoon at the Modern Art Museum, which she said was really good, both their permanent collection and the current show of Robert Rauschenberg's works.

Friday evening we went to hear the Radio Orchestra, primarily because Truls Mørk was playing, as he's certainly one of the world's great cellists. Conductor for the evening was Eivind Aadland, who conducts the orchestra in Trondheim, Norway (and another student of Panula--is there a Scandianvian orchestral conductor who DIDN'T study with him?! I suppose it's like trying to find a Swedish conductor from several earlier generations who didn't study with Eric!). The program opened with Grieg's Ballad, a piano piece orchestrated by Geir Tveitt. Can't say either of us were too impressed with the orchestration--not really inspired. Mørk then played the Kurt Atterberg Cello Concerto. Atterberg (1887-1974) is a name I know--I mention him very briefly in the intro to my book--but I didn't really know any of his music. The work was written between 1918 and 1922, primarily in the predominant national romantic style. Mørk can certainly play--gorgeous tone and spot-on intonation. The piece, however, didn't ultimately excite me. Too much the same. The second half of the program, however, was another matter, with Nielsen's Symphony #3 (Sinfonia espansiva). The orchestra played beautifully. A nice end to the week.

A non-music-related note: There must be a population explosion in Stockholm! There are incredible numbers of baby carriages/prams and toddlers everywhere. It's interesting to see how many babies and children there are everywhere.

Saturday was a relaxing day--the weather turned beautiful and sunny, so we took a long walk, including City Hall where the Nobel prizes are awarded, and ate at a favorite restaurant on Gamla Stan)--and prep time for the rehearsals with the Radio. I should say something about my upcoming work with the Radio Choir. RK normally has four rehearsals per week: Monday 9:30-12:30, Wednesday 3:30-6:30, Thursday same, then Friday 9:30-12:30 again. As they build their season, they plan for "full" productions, which are public concerts, either part of the Radio's series, or sometimes outside productions which they perform for a festival or other outside sponsor. They also have to build in prep time for concerts with the orchestra (such as the Schumann Paradies und die Peri from the beginning of our visit). They also build in tours (they were in Japan earlier this year and did several concerts with Peter Dijkstra in September outside of Sweden). When all of this is done, they have some weeks "left over," and these often become short productions, which don't have enough rehearsal time or repertoire for a full public concert, so are rehearsed and then recorded for later broadcast. I was hired to do one of these short productions, conducting Reger's Acht Geistliche Gesänge and Vater unser (the Vater unser is a 20-minute setting for three choirs). However, this fall the orchestra appointed über-conductor Valery Gergiev (who has to have the most intensive schedule of any conductor alive--Google him and look at what he does) as Conductor Laureate, and as part of that, he's coming to Stockholm to do Act III of Parsifal with the Radio Orchestra and choir (plus the chorus from the Royal Opera) on Good Friday. Unfortunately, this pushed RK's schedule back into the period when I was to do my short production and it couldn't happen. Consequently, they asked if I'd be willing to do some prep rehearsals for them during that week. Of course, I said yes, since to stand in front of this choir is always worthwhile. So my four rehearsals are with an extreme mix of repertoire for various conductors and performances as follows:

Monday: Parsifal (for Gergiev's production--the Opera Chorus no doubt already knows it, so the two choirs will rehearse together closer to the production, or perhaps just a piano rehearsal with Gergiev, if that) and Beethoven (Choral Fantasy & the Gloria and Sanctus from the Mass in C), which is for the Mostly Mozart Festival in NY in August. Why they're doing only the Gloria and Sanctus, I have no idea! It seems odd to pay for RK and have them do only that much on a program, but . . .

Wednesday: Brahms Requiem, for a performance with a Spanish conductor and the orchestra in Norrköping. The choir is expanded to about 48 for this. Quite a few of the extras are new singers from recent auditions who haven't sung with RK before, so we'll see how that goes.

I should say that I have no markings from any of the conductors, so am preparing the choir blind (I'm afraid to say, I've done this too often before--would that orchestral conductors thought about markings for the choir as much as they think about having bowings for the strings in advance!). So, I'll make my best guesses, make decisions as I would for my own performances, and try to vary some tempi and rubati so the choir is flexible.

Thursday's and Friday's rehearsals are both for a performance in Saarbrücken in April or May with Peter Dijkstra, repeating repertoire they did in September with him. They have no rehearsal time with him before this concert (they'll meet him there), so these two rehearsals are to bring the repertoire back up to performance level. For this I DO have a recording from September, so I know what Peter did in terms of tempi, etc. The repertoire is: movements 1, 2, 5 & 6 of Otto Olsson's 6 Latin Hymns; Sven-David Sandström's Hear my prayer (it quotes Purcell's setting in its entirety first) & Singet dem Herrn (one of his newer motets, part of a series that sets exactly the same texts as Bach's motets, also using Bach's divisions of text into movements--this one is particularly virtuosic); Thomas Jennefelt's O Domine; Hillborg's mouyuoum; and Jan Sandström's Gloria. That's a lot to cover in two rehearsals (not that the Brahms Requiem in one rehearsal is luxurious!), even if they know the repertoire. I suspect they will need most time on Sven-David's Singet and the Hillborg, but we'll see. I'll have to play it by ear. Sven-David will be at the rehearsals, so that should be interesting, too.

Ought to be fun!

Sunday dawned another beautiful sunny day (and stayed that way until mid-afternoon when it clouded over), so we had another nice walk in the city between rehearsal prep times, then headed to the Maria Church for a concert at 6 with the Bach Choir. The Bach Choir was founded in 1964 by Anders Öhrwall to specialize in baroque music. They developed a great reputation for their performances of Bach and the Nicholas Harnoncourt recording of the Bach motets with them lists him as the conductor, but he actually played cello and Öhrwall conducted--Öhrwall later told me that Harnoncourt only wanted one thing changed from the way they did the motets--with the exception of that one spot he kept the same tempi, same phrasing, everything! When I visited Sweden for the first time in 1989 the Bach Choir was my favorite choir to listen to in rehearsal--amazing energy in their phrasing and a fresh, vital sound. Maria Södersten, Gary Graden's wife, sang with the Bach Choir at that time and still doe s. Öhrwall developed an unique way of notating his phrasing and this was communicated to choir and instrumentalists alike. Öhrwall also followed Eric as Chief conductor of the Radio Choir (1983-85) and this was NOT a big success--he had a non-traditional conducting technique (although he communicated just fine with his repertoire) and the romantic and contemporary repertoire that were RK's specialties were not his, so it wasn't a good fit. The second time I watched Öhrwall work, he'd had a stroke, which affected both his playing (he led rehearsals from the keyboard) and his speech. The choir's energy and enthusiasm was still the same, however. The choir was also "resident" at Adolf Fredriks Church up until 1999, when their connection with that church was broken (they were always known inside Sweden as Adolf Fredriks Bachkör). One must remember that the choir got considerable financial support from the church and a home to rehearse and perform, so this loss was considerable. They had brief relationships with other churches, but are now a "free-standing" ensemble. Fredrik Malmberg led them briefly, and then Mats Nilsson took charge in 2003, when he returned to Sweden from Australia. Mats sang with the choir for several years in the 1990s and had also guest-conducted them on a number of occasions, so was well-known by the choir. The choir is, in a sense, in rebuilding mode, replacing some older members as they retire with younger ones, and exploring new modes of support.

The concert began with Poulenc's Lenten motets. The church has a very reverberant acoustic, so these were probably the most successful pieces on the program. They were followed by Arvo Pärt's Sieben Magnificat-Antiphonen, then the Mendelssohn Organ Sonata in B-flat Major. Then the major work of the evening, Domenico Scarlatti's Stabat Mater for 12 voices, cello, bass, and organ. Mats used soloists part of the time and full chorus the rest of the time. The choir did a nice job with all the repertoire. Audience was small (ca. 100-125) but enthusiastic.

So ended our next-to-last week in Stockholm. Still hard to believe that our trip is almost over--it's gone incredibly quickly.

Stockholm 2007 - Week 3

February 19, 2007
Stockholm, Sweden

Week 3

Monday was another rehearsal with Fredrik Malmberg and RK. This rehearsal was more focused, the first hour and a half being spent on the Petrassi Nonsense songs. For those who don't know this set, these are challenging and the entire time was spent rehearsing slowly and softly to lock in tuning. Certainly those of you who know the Swedish choirs have heard their fantastic intonation--this isn't the only reason it's so good (superb matching of vowels and control of vibrato are a huge part), but a willingness to patiently work at slow tempi and softly (so one can hear!) to lock tuning is another important part. After the break, the rest of the time was spent on Luciano Berio's 'Cries of London.' This is an immensely challenging piece, with many sections being done by either solo singers or part of the choir (first written for the King's Singers, it was revised in an 8-voice version and performed by the London version of the Swingle Singers, who did quite a bit of Berio's music), so it's the most complicated to rehearse. More on that for Wednesday's rehearsal. Kathryn isn't attending many of these rehearsals, but writing, drawing and doing her own exploring of Stockholm during this time.

Tuesday morning I had a lovely meeting with composer Thomas Jennefelt. Thomas has written some wonderful choral music (many will remember his dramatic 'O Domine') and it was good to catch up with him on his latest activities. Thomas has also long been associated with Eric's Chamber Choir, first as a singer (he is a fine baritone) and then as the choir's President. It's a challenge to maintain such a professional choir as a free-lance ensemble and the board is dealing with the eventual transition, post-Eric. They already have fairly regular guest conductors with the choir--Fredrik will do a production of French baroque music with them later this year, and the Dutch conductor Daniel Reuss (who was conductor for several years of Berlin's RIAS Chamber Choir) will do a performance of Stravinsky's Les Noces. They also are the resident choir at the Stockholm Philharmonic's concert hall, not only giving some of their own performances there, but providing the choir for major works--we'll he ar a Brahms Requiem with an expanded version of them there next week. But the survival of the Chamber Choir once Eric is gone is not a given, and something for real concern.

That evening we went to Uppsala to hear a rehearsal of Orphei Drängar, the truly wonderful male choir. OD, as it's called, constituted the "bookends" for my first visit to Sweden for the month of April in 1989: when I first arrived, Eric was doing a short tour with them, so I was invited along--they put me up in the same hotels, I ate meals with the choir, attended their rehearsals and concerts, etc. And at the end of the month of April were the 1st of May celebrations, which in a northern country are a major event heralding spring and the end of short and cold days. Uppsala, about 45 minutes north of Stockholm, is really a university town, and the university is one of the oldest in Europe. So at the end of that month I was the guest of Eric and Monica at a number of events: sherry at the university's magnificent library, after which the President of the University goes out on the balcony to announce to thousands of congregated students that spring has officially begun (after which there is massive partying); OD's spring concert, or Serenade, which is a relatively light program, followed by a dinner (constantly interrupted by traditional Swedish songs which they all know by heart, each accompanied by a toast and tossing down a 'snaps' with a beer chaser--famous Swedish baritone Håkan Hagegård and his girlfrind at the time, American soprano Barbara Bonney were also guests); and dinner at the castle with the governor and about 15 other people. Kathryn also visited an OD rehearsal with me on our first visit to Sweden together after we got married in 1996 and attended (and sang along at!) the 'old boys' luncheon-reunion in 2002, so for both of us OD has much resonance and good memories!

It also began to snow heavily when we arrived in Uppsala for the Tuesday OD rehearsal (we got there around 4), so we ended up eating dinner at a pub ("An English Pub with an Indian Kitchen") and enjoyed chicken tikka masala while watching the snow fall. We then walked through the snow (which was about 6 inches deep) past the Cathedral, which looked fantastic in the light with the snow falling, and over to the Hugo Alfvén Hall, which is a really wonderful rehearsal room belonging to OD. We were greeted by several different people, given copies of the music, and also chatted with Fredrik Wetterqvist, who was the cultural attaché to the ambassador in Canada and came out from Ottawa to a Pro Coro concert one year. He's now Director of the Department of Press Info and Cultural Affairs for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At any rate, the rehearsal was the third one (out of about 8) for Mats Nilsson, who is one of three candidates to succeed Robert Sund when he retires in 2008. The other two are Folke Alin, who is the long-time accompanist and assistant conductor for OD, and Folke's wife, Cecilia Rydinger-Alin--I don't know how they're dealing with that one between them! It was also interesting that Folke (who, with Cecilia, are part of the same "generation" as Mats--really the last generation from Eric's time teaching at the conservatory--and are mid- to late-40s) was accompanying the rehearsal. I was a bit surprised that they wouldn't have another accompanist for both Mats and Cecilia's concerts, but not so. Mats' program is one of the more serious ones of the year for OD, and a challenging program, with music by Ligeti, Lidholm, Jan Sandström, Javier Busto, etc., plus traditional Swedish music such as that of Hugo Alfvén, the conductor of OD before Eric took over in 1951. It's always interesting to hear work in progress, so the famous OD sound was not always in evidence as they worked on difficult and unfamiliar music--one has to remember that this is an amateur choir, although an extraordinarily good one--but will certainly be there once they really know the music. It's truly a gorgeous sound. If you get a chance to hear them on their North American tour in October/November 2008 (Robert's swan song), don't miss it. They're hoping to have a concert in Edmonton, already have one set in Vancouver, B.C., would like one in the Seattle/Tacoma area, and should be in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well.

Wednesday was another RK rehearsal, much of the time with small groups of the choir rotating between several rooms and conductors working on different music from the program, Fredrik working on the Berio, of course. Fredrik asked me to be one of the conductors tomorrow, so I'm not sure exactly what piece or pieces I'll be working on, but will find out and do my best to help out. Afterwards we met with Gunnar Andersson for dinner. It was (as always with Gunnar) a wide-ranging discussion about music and choirs. Gunnar was for many years the Producer for the Radio Choir, not only doing organizational work, but producing and editing recordings (he has a fantastic ear and knowledge of repertoire) and being intensely involved with the artistic planning of the choir. He's also a fine singer, who sang with both the Chamber and Radio Choirs and a small male ensemble called the Lamentabile Consort (Gary Graden was also a member). Since leaving the Radio, Gunnar is working some with Eric Westberg in Piteå in the north of Sweden, as a free-lance producer for Eric's Chamber Choir and others in Sweden, Denmark and elsewhere, and singing with various choirs on a free-lance basis as well. We spent a lot of time discussing the very real challenges facing Swedish choral life right now and Gunnar is a bit pessimistic. I can't argue, as I've seen some of the evidence myself during this visit, but more about that when I've had more time to hear and process more. There is certainly a risk that the "Swedish Choral Miracle" I wrote of is in danger, at least in part.

Thursday was work with RK; for the first hour and a half I worked a half hour each with 3 different octets from the choir, primarily on two movements of the Petrassi Nonsense for better pitch accuracy, but also on the Rossini Toast pour le nouvel an just to drill a bit and make the French flow better (Fredrik has asked them to sing this one from memory as well, so they need the repetition). The RK singers are great to work with and it was nice to help out in whatever way I could. The rest of the rehearsal was about one half hour on one movement of the Berio, which is starting to come together very nicely. Fredrik has also brought in a stage director friend who will do some work on staging the pieces in a more dramatic way. Should be fun! The last half hour was spent on some smaller repertoire, so I went next door to listen to the rehearsal for the Brahms Requiem with Eric's Chamber Choir (expanded to 60 voices). The rehearsal was led by one of the basses in the choir and not a lot of rehearsal was needed, since most of the choir has sung it many times, and they should sound magnificent.

Friday we went to Uppsala for a day-long workshop with the title, "Swedish Choirs will Sing -- But What?" Organized by Stefan Parkman (former conductor of the Danish Radio Choir, Swedish Radio Choir, and a guest conductor with professional choirs all across Europe) and Gunnel Fagius (a musicologist) of the Choral Centre at the University, in a way it was to explore where Swedish choirs have been and where they might be going. Kath was going to spend most of the day wandering through town and took off for her own adventures. The workshop opened with Stefan doing an interview with Eric about his role in Swedish choral life. I should also say that the workshop was all done in Swedish (of course), which meant that I had to really concentrate to follow the discussions. With someone like Eric, I could understand about 75-80% of what he was saying, since I knew most of it already (context is everything). With a few others later, I would say more like 50% or less, particularly as the day w ent on and I got tired! Following a brief break, Gunnel followed the same procedure with Gunnar Eriksson. Gunnar is now 70, although one wouldn't know it: I hadn't seen him since the summer of 1990, when I did the bulk of my research for the dissertation and he looked little changed. Gunnar lives near Gothenburg, on the Swedish West Coast, and I spent 3 days with him at that time, exploring the music of Swedish West Coast composers during the day and going to a local jazz festival at night. While Gunnar studied with Eric, he has never really cared about the "Swedish sound," but developed a unique way of programming, with improvisations connecting different works, and has many arrangements of both old music new, plus a method of improvising in a contemporary style. He's also been influenced by jazz (which many Swedes love), the music of Macedonia and Cuba, the music of the Danish composer, Per Nørgård, and expressed those over the years with his old Gothenburg Chamber Choir and his still-current 12-voice Rilke Ensemble. He gives very popular workshops, not only in Sweden, but all over Europe and also in Cuba and South America on his way of teaching a choir to improvise. It was also great to talk to him at the break and catch up with what he's doing. Just before the break, one of the highlights of the day was Gunnar and Eric sitting down at the piano, Gunnar playing secondo and Eric playing primo (as Eric said, "my left hand doesn't work so well anymore"), improvising a jazz version of "The Sunny Side of the Street." If you've ever seen Eric in his heyday, you know that watching him sit down at the piano during a rehearsal break, improvising jazz, is a very special thing to hear!



During lunch I got a chance to greet other old friends who were there: Bo Johansson (conductor of the Adolf Fredriks Girl Choir--we'd heard Bo had a mild stroke about a month ago and were happy to see that he seemed almost unaffected), Anders Colldén (who had a much more serious stroke about a year ago--Anders taught conducting at the Conservatory and was a church musician at the Oskar Church), Anders Eby (who is Professor for choral conducting at the Conservatory and long-time conductor of the Mikaeli Chamber Choir), Gunnar Andersson, and others. Afterwards, there was a panel discussion, with Anders, Bo, and six others (conductors, a journalist, composer, etc.) each offering their perspective on where Swedish choral music might be going, with discussion afterwards by the audience as well. This was where (especially after Anders and Bo spoke), my comprehension went down to 50% or less, as discussions went further afield and I got tired. Stefan also asked me to come up and say a few words from my own perspective, which I did very briefly (and in English). The day ended with Eric conducting everyone in a Swedish standard, David Wikander's "Kung Liljekonvälje." We ended up on the train home with the "Bo Club," Bo Johansson, Bo Nilsson (a composer) and Bo Ejeby (a publisher who has in his catalogue, among other things, all of Gunnar's music). We sat with Bo Johansson and had a very short trip back to Stockholm, as Bo is great fun to talk with, and caught up on what we've been doing.



Saturday was a wonderful concert at St. Jacob's with Gary Graden (as singer/MC), Steve Dobrogosz (jazz pianist and composer), Anders Paulsson (soprano sax and composer), and Sebastian Rilton (vocal percussion/bass/arranger and leader of "Rilton's Vänner" or Rilton's Friends, an excellent 5-voice vocal jazz ensemble a la the Real Group). This was Gary stepping out of his usual role as conductor and putting together a program (called "Sing Along") with his friends, which included spirituals (for example, Gary and Sebastian did a great riff off of Moses Hogan's "I'm gonna sing 'til the spriit moves in my heart"), some of Steve's original compositions (including 3 great gospel songs), other original pieces, and lots of audience participation, including teaching the audience to sing (and move to) a South African song. If you heard Gary's choir in Minneapolis at IFCM, the spiritual at the end where Gary did the solo gives you an idea of his style (or for my Pro Coro friends, who got to experience Gary as a guest conductor last year). It was a fun, involving concert--definitely not usual St. Jacob's fare--and the audience of something over 300 loved it. An experiment that was a big success. As Gary said, he may do a piece or two at the end of a Jacobs concert where we can "let down our hair," but has never done a whole program like this one. Great fun and I'm sure different versions of it will happen again in the future.

Later that evening was a great party at Gary and Maria's house (a little outside Stockholm), with a lot of their friends, including all the performers, and people of all ages from a girl about 5 years old who charmed everyone, to Gary and Maria's own kids, children of friends and neighbors, and all the rest of us. A party at Gary's and Maria's always has music, so it began with Bo Hansson (a composer and classical guitar teacher who's written several pieces for Gary's choir) doing three guitar duos with Eric (never got his last name), a guitarist originally from Holland who settled in Sweden some time ago. They're preparing for a Swedish Radio production and played some Sweelinck transcriptions (by Eric), an original piece by Bo, and a Fauré transcription.

After that it was dinner, a marvelous Boeuf Bourguignon prepared by Maria, Gary, and mutual friend Joy Hill from England. Joy being there was serendipitous for us, as we met her for the first time at a party at Gary's during our visit in 2002, when Joy came to Sweden for the first time because of an interest in Swedish choral music and the symposium given by Gary, Eric and me in Uppsala. We became good friends and visited Joy and her family when we traveled to London in 2004 and I did a master class at Roehampton Univeristy (where Joy taught at the time). Joy also conducts the Chamber Choir of the prep department at the Royal College of Music and had been doing some workshops in Lithuania (she's done a lot in the Baltics since 2004) and was coming home--Gary convinced her to stop over in Stockholm on her way home. It was the first time we'd seen her in person since 2004, so a great thing for all of us.



After dinner, Gary instigated more music, including the two of us singing some Stephen Foster songs (wow, the original lyrics are incredibly racist!), Steve Dobrogosz accompanying Gary doing Randy Newman (and Gary does a pretty fine Randy Newman impression), and also Steve accompanying one of the boys, around 15 or so, in "Bridge over Troubled Water" (how many 15 year-old boys do you know who'd stand up in front of a group of adults and kids his own age and do that?). Anyway, simply a marvelous evening and we were the last to leave at 2 in the morning, taking a cab back to our apartment.



Sunday was a lazy day early (partly because of getting to bed around 3), followed by an absolutely amazing dinner prepared by Eva Wedin at her apartment in Bromma (a suburb where I lived during the summer of 1990, when I did most my research) along with Arne Lundmark (manager of the Radio Choir) and his wife, Birgit. Another great evening with lots of conversation about a wide variety of topics.

Anyway, we're blessed to have amazing friends here in Sweden. The coming week (and report) will be shorter, as we leave Friday for a week in Kristiansand, Norway for a visit with Kathryn's youngest sister, Heidi, and her family. Heidi did a study abroad program in her next-to-last year as a Norwegian studies major and ended up meeting her future husband, Trygve Trædal, there; he teaches piano at the Conservatory in Kristiansand. So Heidi's lived in Norway nearly 20 years and they have two really wonderful teenagers, Elisabeth and Christoffer. I actually knew Heidi before I knew Kathryn, as she was a student at PLU my first couple of years and went on one Choir of the West tour when we took a chamber orchestra (she's a violinist).

Stockholm 2007 - Week 2

Week 2

Early in the week I spent time at St. Jacobs with Gary, beginning to look through some of the latest Swedish music, plus other pieces Gary's done recently from around Europe. It's always wonderful to find new repertoire! Tuesday evening we went with Gary and his choir to Uppsala, where they were having their first rehearsal with orchestra for Mendelssohn's 'Paulus.' This was a co-production with the Uppsala Chamber Orchestra, so one concert to be in Uppsala and one in St. Jacobs, with the orchestra's conductor leading the performance (he's Estonian, so the rehearsal was conducted in English rather than Swedish). This is a very good chamber orchestra and they will be the orchestra for Bach's Johannespassion in another month, this time with Gary conducting. To give an idea of how quickly they work, the choir had 4 regular rehearsals and a long Saturday rehearsal for a LOT of music in Paulus. The Bach is a repertoire piece for them, so they'll likely have 2 choral rehearsals before beginnning with the orchestra.

Wednesday was a Radio library day for me, while Kath wandered and shopped nearby. Thursday, we met Eric at this apartment for coffee at 1 PM to chat further about what we're both doing, what's happening in Sweden, etc. We then went to the first full RK rehearsal for their next production, with conductor Frederik Malmberg. I'd met Malmberg before, but hadn't seen him work. He's particularly known for his specialties in early music, but does a wide variety of music and last year was appointed conductor of the Danish Radio Choir, which has reorganized with a 14-voice core that they expand as necessary for different repertoire. His program with RK is eclectic (to say the least!): several Gesualdo madrigals (only 12 singers) and the Monteverdi 'Amor; then full choir for Rossini's I Gondolieri and Toast pour le nouvel an; a short chorus from Verdi's Otello (Fuoco di gioia); Petrassi's Nonsense (in Italian--they're settings of Edward Lear limericks--I sang them in English years ago with Rod Eichenberger); and Luciano Berio's 'Cries of London (which has sections for solo voices as well). The connection is Italian composers. Interesting to watch him work and it will be interesting to see the program develop.

Friday morning I went to Fredrik's 2nd rehearsal with RK (still just working through the repertoire, not a lot of detailed work yet) while Kathryn did some things around the apartment and then went to one of her favorite small museums. At the end of the rehearsal I went to the other end of town to meet Mats Nilsson for lunch and then coffee at his apartment. Mats is anther friend and colleague whom I've known since my earlierst time in Sweden and is now in his late 40's, I'd say. Mats has done a lot of different things and was one of Eric's last generation of students: quite a few productions with RK, a nice recording with his own small vocal ensemble, worked with the symphonic choirs in Gothenberg and Oslo, spent 5 years in Sydney Australia conducting the Sydney Symphonic Choir, and now conducts the Bach Choir (which Anders Öhrwal had for many years), plus a small amateur choir that we'll hear on Sunday evening, and teaches conducting part-time at the Conservatory (primarily to the music teachers). Great to catch up with him and we'll also see him work with Orphei Drängar, the fabulous men's chorus from Uppsala--Robert Sund is retiring next year and Mats is one of three candidates for the position.

I then headed back to the apartment to meet Kath, as we were to catch the train to Uppsala and meet Robert and Margareta Sund for dinner at their apartment at 6 PM. We had a fantastic evening with them (and a wonderful dinner) as both are great, fun people. Again, I've known Robert for a long time and particularly got to know him at the first Marktoberdorf competition in 1989, where we were both judges. The judging sessions were all conducted in German and Robert was there to help me find the right word when I needed it--it's not easy to describe what you think of some choir's performance in another language! Robert is ALWAYS traveling (in the next couple months he'll be in Cuba for America Cantat, several places in the US for about three weeks--including Miami for the ACDA convention--and then in Amsterdam to do a week-long conducting workshop with the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Robert turned 64 last year and at OD's famous "Caprice" concert sang the Beatles' "When I'm 64" -- so we convinced him to recreate it for us, which he did, accompanying himself on the piano. We left just in time to catch the final train back to Stockholm, getting home just after midnigtht.



Saturday was Mendelssohn's Paulus at St. Jacobs, and the concert went very well. The choir was great (again, 40 singers over a large orchestra) and soloists (from Sweden, Latvia and Estonia) were very good, particularly the Estonian tenor. We also saw Birgit Hemberg (Eskil's widow) there--her daughter sings in Gary's choir--and had a lovely visit. We both know Birgit from before and had a great dinner at Birgit and Eskil's home during our last visit to Sweden. We'll find time to meet with her later and hope to get her, Gary, and Gary's wife Maria, over to the apartment for dinner. Birgit is a fabulous cook and was for a long time editor of Sweden's leading food magazine. She's now "retired", but apparently is working on a new cookbook, so Kathryn (a foodie, for sure) in particular looks forward to talking to her more about that! Birgit is also busy continuing to promote Eskil's music. After a great reception for the choir and orchestra afterwards, we headed home.

Mats' concert was with an amateur choir based at Emmanuel Church, 20 singers of decent quality, but nothing like the other choirs we've heard. A nice performance including Jan Sandström's (no relation to Sven-David) Biegga Luotha, which is a version of a Lapland "Joik"--the performance was a bit less vigorous and "ethnic" than some I've heard. It ended with Morten Lauridsen's Lux aeterna--Lauridsen's music seems just as popular here as in the US (I did the Madrigali with RK in 2002 on my last visit and at that time it was a bit new).

Next week brings more rehearsals with RK, coffee with composer Thomas Jennefelt; a dinner with Gunnar Andersson; watching Mats in rehearsal with OD in Uppsala; a choral seminar in Uppsala on Friday with Stefan Parkman, Eric, Gunnar Eriksson, and others; a fun concert Saturday at St. Jacobs with Gary singing, jazz pianist/composer Steve Dobrogosz and soprano sax player Anders Paulsson playing (and a visit from our British conductor friend, Joy Hill, whom we first met when I first conducted RK in 2002), plus what I'm sure will be a great party at Gary's afterward; and dinner at Eva Wedin's with Arne and his wife (on my mom's 80th birthday!). So it remains a fantastic (and busy) time here.