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Jostein Stalheim - Hidden Music for flute and piano (2003)
(b. Voss, 23. July 1960)
First peformance:
Gunnar Sævigsalen (Bergen) Bergen Chamber Music Society series.
16. April 2005
Gro Sandvik, flute
Einar Røttingen, piano
Jostein Stalheim was born in Voss, Norway and started composing at an early age. When only 17 years old, his first works were broadcast on both radio and television. He studied composition and accordion at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, Sibelius Academy and at the Norwegian State Academy of Music. Stalheim appears regularly in European festivals as soundpainter, performer and composer.
Stalheim has written music for orchestra, chamber-ensembles, solo, multimedia and also site-specific productions. Stage music comprises a considerable part of his production; among others the opera “Pr.Warrant's Progress” and the ballets; “Watch”, “Volatile”, “Alrekr” and “Kast”. He has worked in theatres both as composer and musician, a.o. The Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Hordaland Teater, Den Nationale Scene, The Norwegian National Ballet and Danseteatret/Carte Blanche in Norway. He has received commissions from ensembles both in Norway and abroad.
Stalheim is internationally recognized as an accordion soloist and performs at festivals and with several international orchestras. He had his breakthrough in 1984 in Nordic Solistbiennale were he performed with Esa Pekka Salonen and Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. He appears in numerous recordings, both as soloist, as chamber musician and with orchestra; for example Broderfolkonsert, the double concerto by Lasse Thoresen with Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra.
He received a Grant from Norwegian Art Council 2014-2015 to compose music for the opera La Peur et les Soins with libretto by Astrid Luisa Niebuhr. He has composed the music for Watch with premiere in Dansens Hus, Oslo.
Stalheim also contributed as a composer to the science opera Rosetta's Stone; a cooperation between the two librettists Oded Ben-Horin, John F. McGrew and the co-composer John Bilotta with premiere August 12th 2016 in San Francisco. In the same year he had several large projects including Soundpainting with the contemporary ensemble BIT-20 and Performance Artist Bergen.
Stalheim's music has many endearing qualities. It often embraces the absurd and the illogical from an almost childlike perspective. There is never a hint of pretension in it and, with its deadpan delivery it often leaves the listener in doubt as to whether it is meant to be taken seriously or not seriously at all. In common with the music of Messiaen (a composer Stalheim deeply admires) Stalheim's compositions tend, with their disarming honesty, to have a cleansing effect on the listener. His compositions often feel like suggestions rather than statements. They are never intrusive or imposing and are always entertaining, thought-provoking, surprising and permeated with a fundamental lightness.
Hidden Music was composed for Gro Sandvik (long-serving former solo flautist with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra) and Einar Røttingen who, as well giving the work's first performance, recorded it on the CD "Chromos" (PPC 9059). The work is divided into eight sections that play without interruption. Although diverse motifs and ideas do recur, the music unfolds, at first, in the manner of a collage rather than as an organically developing discourse. The sections alternate between repose and activity, both in their extreme forms. The piece begins with a gradually expanding flute melisma punctuated by light staccato chords. This, the first of the calm sections serves as an introduction and is soon replaced by a strongly contrasting loud, raucous and hyper section - beginning at measure 25 - that is as impenetrable as the introduction was transparent and airy. This alternation between extremes becomes the tenor of the work. Whereas the loud sections always begin abruptly, their tranquil counterparts tend to appear gradually out of the din as if the hidden music to which the title alludes is being disclosed behind the implacable walls of sound that obscure it. These serene sections often delight in the repetition of single notes and contain evocative harmonies, both of the overtly tonal and more free-tonal kinds. A good example of this is the passage beginning at m. 62, proceeding through the Lontano innocente section (m. 75 and ff.). The extremely tender texture of this sequence leads into the sanctum of the piece, as it were. Around measure 81 the pianist is asked to read a text in an almost inaudible whisper while playing. A few bars later, the reading is completed, this time in a more audible voice, but still very subdued. The text is by Stalheim:
Gjekk til ro - under snjo
snjoen fyk - stryk ut faret
banda søv - men svinn ei
Stoggar, lyer - natta herdar
tankjen klår - lyt koma att
søkja faret - under snjo
(I lay to rest - under the snow
the snow fell - hiding the trail
the cords slept - but did not vanish
standing still, listening - the night hardens
the thought brightens - must turn back
search for the trail - under the snow)
After a briefer sonic onslaught (mm. 90-102), the music becomes even more sparse than before and it falls to the flautist to recite the same text through the instrument's mouth piece (mm. 117 to 127). The sudden dancing character introduced in m. 134 seems like a distant echo of the louder music. The flute responds by repeating its original arabesques and the piano follows suit by reinstating the wistful chord sequence heard earlier on m. 62. The flute becomes the leading voice as the piano repeats a high C (mm. 154-167). Eventually both instruments partake in the dainty dancing music earlier introduced by the piano. This carefree state of bliss is abruptly obliterated by the third and longest of the strident sections (mm. 181-232). The new emerging calm music now becomes warmer, with a declamatory figure supported by an unchanging E flat minor harmony (m. 237 and ff.). This new section seems to incorporate strands of both worlds: the contemplative and the active. In mm. 275-279 they appear simultaneously. The more active strand eventually gains the upper hand but the aggression that had characterized its earlier appearances is now transformed into a more carefree, unassuming expression. It seems that, by the end of the piece, a happy symbiosis has occurred: the two extremes have influenced each other positively in the manner of an alchemical transformation. Balance and accord have been achieved and the piece ends in an upbeat manner.
Ricardo Odriozola, April 21st 2023
German preface not available ...
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