This portrait CD has been long in coming. Henrik Strindberg has had an important place amongst contemporary Swedish composers for many years now. I even remember him from the time when I started getting seriously interested in modern art music, and already at that early stage there were articles about him and interviews with him in Nutida Musik (Contemporary Music); the main Swedish modern music magazine since the 1950s.

The first thing I recall is my curiosity about some of the titles for his pieces. They were always fantasy evoking and ingenious. So is the music, I might add!

Strindberg is seen as a thorough structuralist, with reference to his working out of compositional methods as well as systems, in addition to the pure act of composing; the end result. This scientific atmosphere which is felt like an aura around Strindberg and his work is duly amplified and reinforced by the artwork which he has chosen for the booklet; a number of yellow pages with what looks like wiring diagrams.

Some may be taken aback by a definition of an artist as a scientific structuralist, but then the concept is deeply misunderstood. Having worked extensively (a work that continues!) with Karlheinz Stockhausen – the structuralist guru, one might say! – I fully recognize how such misunderstandings may occur, but be sure: they have nothing with artistic reality to do! The careful manifestations of shapes and forms and methods are just there to take good care of the flow of creativity, to cast ideas on a whim in viable forms, in works of art that have an impact, that do mean something – i.e. to utilize the creative flow to its fullest perceptible expression.

This is in a way comparable to structured improvisation, which is a kind of improvisation in which a few rules are given, for taking the musician onto paths that he otherwise would not tread. Completely free improvisation tends to lead the musician to safe ground, away from the potholes and pit falls of discovery, right back into clichés that can’t interest anyone. A few rules, for example how to react musically if this and this happens, if so and so is heard, etcetera, forces the player to go places he wouldn’t go, even though he can chose how to do it, thus retaining the improvisational gesture, but in an environment that will shape his instrument and his relations to the other instruments into tools of exploration of sound.
This may be the most important aspect of playing and composing that Stockhausen has taught me. I feel that Henrik Strindberg is right there in this knowledge too, and that makes me feel reassured!

Before Strindberg fully entered the obscure realm of art music, he worked in the legendary progressive rock band Ragnarök in the 1970s. Part of his education in that group lingers on in his attitudes and as an atmosphere or prerequisite in his art music, no doubt. There is a head-on mentality in Strindberg’s oeuvre that probably originates in the Ragnarök years.

The first piece on the CD is Chosen, springing from four poems by enfant terrible poet Bruno K. Öijer. This is for soprano and orchestra, and the soprano heard is Annika Skoglund.

With a rustle the music commences, with a silent handling of wood blocks, their sounds panning wildly through the sound space. The orchestra has the benefit of live electronics, which explains some of the spatial flurries in here.
The soprano presents Öijer’s text in a rather traditional manner – but the music jumps into places that you perhaps would not expect on first experiencing the voice.
Strings grow slowly on you like an atmosphere of thin mist, while percussive elements in the orchestra and electronically treated flutes color your sight in fairytale nuances.

The orchestra rises to its feet and grows out of proportion, blocking the sun, casting huge shadows of sound across the silence of the listeners.

The music tends to pulsate slowly in the brass, in a slow instrumental breathing that supports the beauty of the voice. Thinned-out sections open in transparency, until the sounds merge in force and density, in a John Adams type of Harmonilehre, eventually reaching into a thumping, stomping orchestral series of short tuttis, almost in the guise of Luciano Berio’s Eindrücke. It’s exciting and beautiful, in a rhythmic as well as a timbral aspect.

I wasn’t really aware before how good an orchestrator Henrik Strindberg is. Here is proof of that.

The way the piano – and then a voice – seamlessly grow out of an orchestral thump, is masterly thought-out and executed; very intriguing.

The lingering tones after orchestral outbreaks sometimes take on unforeseen – from my viewpoint! – timbres of gold and purple, like an afterglow of a strong feeling…

In all this orchestral commotion and pulsating waveforms of sound Strindberg still makes room for the soprano to express herself in a natural, human way. Amazing!

The electronic manipulations that are evident in some sections appear in a sensitive and withheld manner, never for their own sake, but to reinforce something, or accentuate something, or for the sole purpose of atmosphere. Very good!

Track 2 is called 2 Pianos, executed by the pianists Mats Widlund and Ann-Sofi Klingberg. The beginning is clear, soft-spoken, rippling like a ford or a mountain stream, with some darker shadows lurking, but lurking playfully.
The gracious display of rhythms and pitches immediately catch your attention, because it feels like something quite interesting, not to say exciting, is about to happen.
Sudden outbursts, resulting in different tempi, beads of tones at different velocities, color the listening with tickling experiences.
The rhythms – the spurs of rhythm – are broken off, interrupted… and then picked-up again, only to release their inherent energy of motion on sparsely spread dot of notes that will have to handle all the inertia! It gives you a peculiar feeling of falling forward with a heavy impact in your back!
The contrasting elements of this piece calls for an attentive listener and a patient one – but if you are you’re in for a spree-freak joyride!

Andreas Engström, in his highly recommendable booklet text, goes into more detail about methods of composing derived from computer programs that Strindberg has constructed. Engström’s text is actually more of an essay, well worth studying.

Piece 3, on tracks 3 – 6, is Hope. One of the sections is written in the memory of Dagmar Hagelin, who disappeared while mistakenly apprehended by the military in the coup of Argentina in the 1970s, supposedly murdered by the officer Alfredo Astiz. This part of Hope is also dealing with Dagmar Hagelin’s father’s long fight to find out the truth about the disappearance, and his efforts to bring Astiz to justice.

Hope is a concerto for saxophone and orchestra in four parts. Jörgen Petterson – known from all kinds of saxophone environments, not least the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet – plays the saxophone in this concerto.

The saxophone immediately sets out on a tour-de-force of meandering, powerful flows of tones, at time simply over-powering in might, other times poetic, sensual – but in a haste and a velocity that almost leaves you breathless. However, as the orchestra, with strings, percussion, piano etcetera, is allowed to sway and dance like seaweed around the saxophone, a greater space is outlined in the mind of the listener, even though it is a fast ride in a fast machine; the machine of The Norrköping Symphony Orchestra directed by Lü Jia.

In spite of the might and the speed all the individual sounds are clean and clear and highly palpable, tangible – which makes listening intellectual as well as physical, soaring and meaty at the same time.

At times Strindberg allows for soloist saxophone passages, like illustrious, egocentric cadenzas!

One of the other parts of Hope murmurs to a start with silently whispering strings preparing the ground for flowering flutes and gold dust saxophonisms on a highly poetic, self-reflecting note, with the withheld power of gallantly treading drums as a mere demonstration of possible powers… These musical thoughts are spiraling themselves, rising for God-given outlooks on existence.

Cheap Thrills is a title that makes me think of people like Frank Zappa, but perhaps that is a mere coincidence, or I’m full of too many analogies... It is a chamber piece with electronic enhancements, which grows on me steadily as I listen – because like Stockhausen – whom I am more familiar with than with Strindberg – Henrik Strindberg manages to use the electronics to make the acoustics better, or more exciting or more magic – but not really to take the place of the acoustic means. This way Strindberg extends his sounding possibilities magnificently, beautifully – and I admit I soar like a suspended held breath through these realms; brilliant!
Strindberg really merges the finest aspects of French electroacoustics (Jean Schwarz, Bernard Parmegiani, François Bayle) with the orchestral magnificence of modern day chamber ensembles. It is not easy to do this naturally, but Strindberg – like Mr. Stockhausen – is doing it.

The last piece, at tracks 8 and 9, sports the title work; Within Trees.

According to booklet author Andreas Engström, Within Trees is the foremost example of Strindberg’s talent of having scientific structure result in a viable sounding result. In fact – and this is not possible to know without an explanation – the title itself has to do with the compositional structure, which differs from the traditional way of composing for orchestra, appearing instead in a kind of tree structure. Strindberg used graphic notation for estimating FM-spectra etcetera. I could use many words for this, but won’t. Study the booklet or get in touch with Strindberg, if you’re especially focused!

The sounding result is my end of the procedure, and out there I find highly viable, touch and tight, dense sound masses, which, nonetheless, carry distinctive patterns of the individual constituencies. In other words, listening is worthwhile – and, as often with Strindberg’s music: exciting!

The colors of Strindberg’s tonal palette are manifold, his nuances innumerable and merging into each other in showers and spurs of glittering grains – especially so in Within Trees.

Big sections of the orchestra work hard together to master this thick sound layer, which at times relaxes, rests in calm breathing, regenerating, letting the starshine light up their brains with fresh thoughts and pristine emotions… which then are returned to the world inside the gleaming vibrations of this majestic music that rises like a tsunami over the shores of our perception…

This Strindberg CD nurtures the lust for more from the same composer!