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Ketil Hvoslef - Piano Solo (1999, rev. 2002)
(b. 19. July 1939)
First performance: Einar Røttingen, Bergen 10. November 2000
Ketil Hvoslef was born in Bergen on July 19th 1939. He is the youngest son of Harald Sæverud and Marie Hvoslef. His birth coincided with the completion of Siljustøl, the great mansion in the outskirts of Bergen where the Sæverud family settled and where Harald Sæverud lived until his passing in 1992.
Being the son of a great composer, music was naturally very present during Hvoslef’s upbringing. He learned to play the piano and the viola and, in his teens, he became heavily involved in Bergen's jazz and pop music environment, becoming a member of what was, reportedly, Bergen's first rock band. Hvoslef (who retained the Sæverud surname until his 40th birthday, when he decided to adopt that of his mother) had, however, plans to become a painter and took serious steps in that direction. It was in the Bergen Art Academy that he met the painter Inger Bergitte Flatebø (1938 - 2008), who would become his wife and adopt the Sæverud surname.
With the birth of their first child, Trond, in 1962, Hvoslef abandoned his dreams of becoming either a pop star or a painter and he took an organist's diploma at the Bergen Music Conservatoire. Upon finishing his studies, he was offered a position as theory teacher at the Conservatoire by its director, the legendary Gunnar Sævig (1924 - 1969).
Hvoslef became a composer almost by accident. In his 25th year he composed a piano concertino for his own satisfaction. Shortly after, his father passed on to him a commission for a woodwind quintet he had no time or inclination to write. And after that he simply kept going. He had study periods in Stockholm (with Karl-Birger Blomdahl and Ingvar Lindholm) and in London (with Henri Lazarof and Thomas Rajna).
Since the 1970s Hvoslef has received a fairly steady stream of commissions and his work list counts with some 140 compositions to date. Hvoslef always enjoys a challenge and he has often written for unusual or seemingly "hopeless" instrumental combinations, always using the limitations of the ensemble as a stimulant for his imagination. He has written for large orchestra, for a great variety of chamber ensembles and for solo instruments. He has so far composed nineteen concertos and three operas.
Hvoslef was the Festival Composer in the Bergen International Festival in 1990 and has received several prizes, such as the Norwegian Composers' Society's "work of the year" in four occasions (1978, 1980, 1985 and 1992) and TONO's Edvard Prisen in 2011.
Hvoslef's music is characterized by great transparency and by a conscious building of tension achieved by accumulating latent energy. He wants his listeners to lean forward and listen rather than sit back and be lulled into a reverie. Listening to a Hvoslef composition is always an adventure: one never knows what to expect. He stretches sections of the music almost to breaking point and only then introduces a new idea. His music has a classical clarity and transparency and is therefore always easy to follow. Although his very personal and concentrated language is very much of its time, Hvoslef is not averse to using material that is recognizably tonal (such as major and minor triads) albeit always in a context that sets these familiar sounds in conflict with their surroundings. Rhythm is a very prominent aspect of Hvoslef’s music. Although the vast majority of his production is notated in 4/4 metre, his rhythmical patterns almost never conform to it, always favouring patterns of odd-numbered notes.
Ketil Hvoslef is, without a doubt, one of the greatest composers to emerge from Scandinavia in the past fifty years.
Piano Solo is one of a collection of pieces Hvoslef has written through the years for a number of instruments whose title is the Italian name of the instrument followed by "solo". There are, to date, three for violin, and one for organ, flute, trumpet, cello and guitar, besides the one for piano.
Piano Solo was commissioned for a special project: the pianist Einar Røttingen performed a solo recital in Bergen in which he premiered several pieces for solo piano commissioned for the occasion from a number of Bergen-based composers. Piano Solo was one of them.
Writing for solo piano has never come naturally to Hvoslef. All the same he has composed a number of outstanding works among which Rondo con Variazioni (1970) and Beethoven Fantasy (1982) deserve special mention.
Hvoslef writes:
For me, writing for piano is like I suppose writing about his typewriter would be for an author. I have often used the piano in my chamber music but only twice earlier [i.e. prior to Piano Solo] for solo piano. The instrument, as such, does not stimulate my imagination. I had to find a remedy for this. The solution in my first piano piece ("Rondo con Variazioni") was the actual form of the piece. In the second one ("Beethoven Fantasy") it was a theme form a Beethoven piano sonata. This time, in "Piano Solo", my thoughts were with my friend the pianist Einar Røttingen. He has meant a lot to me for many, many years and, in this piece I wished to try to give back something of that which inspired me. "Piano Solo" is dedicated to Einar Røttingen in gratitude!
Hvoslef, the man and the composer, has never been one to wear his heart on his sleeve. His music has never been about him. He has stated that, when composing, he is unable to think in extra-musical terms. In line with Stravinsky, a composer whose influence was important in his early years, Hvoslef allows the music to express itself in its own terms. Piano Solo is a good example of a work that refuses to play up to listeners' expectations. Any hint of the heavy tradition the instrument carries is discarded from the very outset.
After two quick chromatic arabesques, the left hand unleashes a morose progression of - mostly - parallel thirds in the low register. Thirds, particularly in the deep register of the piano, are inherently "out of tune" intervals. This long line - lasting 48 measures - thus creates a great deal of tension and relative discomfort. It also manages to reference (wholly unintentionally, as it happens) the arch-famous riff of "Smoke on the Water". On top of this relentless row of thirds, the opening arabesque makes occasional appearances, as do some trademark Hvoslef meandering eighth-note chromatics. The rest of the piece is a succession of events as bizarre as they are utterly logical. One almost senses the fun the composer is having in unleashing the most unlikely processes and watching them unfold with childlike expectation.
Contrasts play a very important role. For instance, in pages 4-6 a melody in the left hand, consisting of long notes and played pianissimo (as soft as possible) is set off by the right hand playing the main notes of the melody three octaves above as fortissimo, staccato thrusts. Thereafter, on pages 6-7, a highly angular series of staccato notes in the right hand becomes louder while the single repeated bass note remains pianissimo.
In pages 8-9 we are treated to a row of short chords whose placement in time makes it impossible to establish where the beat is. After a short left hand soliloquy, the two hands are locked into rapid runs played in parallel major seconds (pages 10-12). The short bursts of activity - intersected by silences - resemble in shape the piece's opening flourishes, but are now robbed of their original flair because of the close proximity between the hands. The process found in pages 4-6 is now reversed in a more richly harmonic passage: the left hand plays fortissimo staccato tritones while the left hand plays its own sequence of tritones, pianissimo and legato. The hands eventually find one another at the bottom of page 13. After four measures of ominous bass 8th-notes on page 14, a new element appears: a passage of 16th-notes with alternating hands. They now share the same pianissimo dynamic, but the left hand plays legato while the right hand plays staccato. From the bottom of page 15 all semblance of elegance is thrown to the wind and the hands now loudly perform a dissonant chase, occasionally interjected by short, very deep chords. The latter eventually transform into a rhythmic ostinato that, alternating with short legato lines, provides the background for a right hand 7/8 repeated chord figure that increases in volume only to fall back, again and again. At the bottom of page 19, this devolves into a fidgety and somewhat unnerving 16th-note figure on the right hand. Then, as if out of nowhere, a succession of delicate chords, separated by very long silences makes itself heard on pages 21-22. After this sonic oasis, the restless 16th-note figure reappears on page 22. It now sets the stage for a race between the two hands. The figure, lasting five beats - including the rests - falls out of sync, one 16th-note at a time. The effect is akin to an artificially accelerated race between two tortoises. Sped up or not, it takes a very long time before they are in step with one another again. And then... a unison C five octaves apart, and a magical passage of 16th-notes with alternating hands, but now clouded by the sustain pedal, which gradually releases its hold to reveal the notes in their dainty lightness. Finally, a return of sorts to the opening music. Only now the notes are freed from their tight chromatic straitjacket and can cover wide intervals, creating proper, uninhibited arabesques. This lasts for two and a half pages (pp. 27-29) before the unison C, now in double octaves returns at full throttle and in Morse-like rhythms. In the end the music peters out and we are left with the eerie resonance of one final cluster.
I generally oppose the practice of describing pieces of music as a succession of events. In the case of Piano Solo I have decided to go against this aversion. I have experienced that audiences can get quite excited by a vocal demonstration of what makes Hvoslef's music remarkable. With this text I have attempted to present the list of events the music passes through as a kind of recipe that may be used for writing one's own piece. What would happen if a composer took this description and wrote a composition based on it? Would it sound like Hvoslef? Almost certainly not. Arguably, Hvoslef is one of very few composers - perhaps the only one - who can get away with making music in the way described above. By hardly ever bringing back material and by allowing musical processes to play themselves out, he always keeps the listener engaged, never knowing what is about to happen next. And one is always keenly aware of what is happening musically. Piano Solo exhibits these properties in spades.
I wish to express my gratitude to Einar Røttingen for assisting me with some notation subtleties. These have been approved by Ketil Hvoslef who, as usual, has also thoroughly proofread the edition. Many thanks to both of them.
Ricardo Odriozola - Bergen August 25th 2021
German Preface not available / Deutsches Vorwort steht nicht zur Verfügung
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