Folke Rabe; The Crescendo Concert
Part 1 of 2
Folke Rabe giving a presentation
at his 3rd February portraits concert
at Crescendo in Norrköping, Sweden
Folke Rabe – The Crescendo Concert; music for brass & electroacoustic music
Location: Crescendo, Järnbrogatan 3, Norrköping, Sweden, 3rd February 2004.
Arranged by Föreningen Annan Musik, Norrköping (The Association Other Music)
Folke Rabe [composition, electroacoustics & diffusion] – Brynjar Kolbergsrud [trumpet] – Oddbjørn Lund [trumpet] – Lennart Langer [French horn] – Jimmy Olsson [trombone] – Urban Stenqvist [tuba]
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1. Basta for solo trombone (1982) (5’)
2. Tintomara for trumpet & trombone (1992) (5’)
3. Escalations for brass quintet (1988) (11’)
Intermission
4. ARGH!, NYC March 5 1965, 4 – 5 P.M. (1965) (7’) (Swedish premier)
5. To the Barbender (1982) (4’)
6. Cyklon (1984) (10’)
7. What?? (1967) (25’)
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The opportunity to attend a Folke Rabe portraits concert is a chance one wouldn’t want to miss. Folke has been at the center of contemporary music of different veins for many decades, as a musician (trombone, for the most part) and composer, but also as an administrator and a radioman, and his significance for the broader knowledge of rather exclusive sound art is immense. He is one of those legendary personalities, one of those few really indispensable characters of modern art, who in his life’s work has woven a magic web of wildly disparate connections, a worldwide network of contacts, fusing the noble and the outcasts of culture in a diligent flow of creativity. Much of his time has gone into presenting the music of his contemporaries, and no one else has come close to his fluid and initiated outpour on the radio waves or in the concert houses.
During his many years in music and art, Folke has come to know many of the other leading cultural personalities worldwide personally, like, for instance, Terry Riley, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, György Ligeti and so forth, and he has ventured into interviews with, to name but a few, Edgar Varèse, Frank Zappa and John Cage! It’s almost scary to ponder the experiences of this tall and thin man, growing a bit older now, looking over into his 70s, which are approaching, but still so young at heart.
I received the news of this portraits concert in Norrköping with great joy, a unique opportunity to listen at length to Folke Rabe’s music in a live situation; the first part being live per se, and the second part diffused in the hall by the composer.
I traveled from neighboring Skitköping with a friend from Stockholm who picked me up, and when we had driven through the darkness and the mist along the highway, we found our way into Norrköping and finally detected a parking space. We walked the last part along icy sidewalks, crossed a river right in the center of town, and came into a district of old, forlorn textile industries, which have all been remodeled and turned into museums, libraries, a concert house etcetera, in the most beautiful way. We walked until we found the sign Crescendo, and knocked on the door. Crescendo is in fact a jazz club of distinct origin, and many of the masters of jazz have played there. In that way it’s a bit like Nalen in Stockholm. Crescendo houses other interests too, which is why the association Annan Musik chose to present Folke Rabe’s portraits concert there.
We were let in by some Crescendo staff, and immediately marveled at the interior, which is very appealing, with wooden columns in a spacious hall and warm, comfortable colors.
Folke Rabe getting his notes right
prior to the Crescendo concert
Folke Rabe was meddling along inside the premises, getting the last details ready. We greeted each other, and Folke continued his last minute preparations, sitting down at a table behind the mixer, sorting out and editing his notes, while the musicians checked the spots on stage, to get the light right.
People slowly seeped into the hall; a small but dedicated crowd, filling a good portion of the seats.
Jimmy Olsson performing Basta!
Then, without any prior warning, just as it should be, Jimmy Olsson burst upon the scene, breaking into Basta. There are some theatrical aspects of the piece, which calls for the suddenness, and which Rabe explains below. Basta is intense, and Olsson performed it intensely. [Basta is available on Phono Suecia PSCD 67]
After the performance Folke Rabe, after making his way through the applause, appeared in front of the stage, addressing the audience (His presentation throughout has been translated from the Swedish by the reviewer, and minor editing had been applied to get by certain spoken language characteristics. Remarks between [brackets] are comments by the reviewer):
Folke Rabe
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Is there any need for a microphone, or is it okay like this? It a little bit more relaxed like this.
Anyway, my name is Folke Rabe, and I’ve written this piece called Basta, which Jimmy Olsson from the orchestra of this town played, meritoriously, I think.
I’ve been a composer, but never fulltime. I’ve played the trombone myself, too, but it happens more seldom these days. I played both jazz and chamber music once upon a time, and I was a member of a group called The New Culture Quartet. A couple of us played the trombone.
I’ve been working with music administration at The Swedish Concert Institute and at The Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, as well as at The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs.
I began doing radio quite early in the 1960s, and I’ve always enjoyed it very much, so I worked my last 20 years before retirement at The Swedish Radio, where I’m still at it, as a freelancing senior citizen, presenting concerts etcetera.
I wrote trombone pieces in collaboration with a friend of mine called Jan Bark in the 60s, among other things trombone quartets, for example Bolos, and later a more spectacular piece called Polonaise. It was titled thus because we composed it as a commission for The Warsaw Autumn Festival; a kind of reverence to Poland. Some dance steps were prescribed also, in that piece, further motivating the title.
We had certain visual qualities in those trombone quartets. In our opinion, concerts were not just performing music. A concert is a total experience, where you actually see people playing, and you really se what a trombonist does. You see it much more vivid with trombone and harp than flute, which is a more secretive instrument. So, we saw the concert situation as a scenic whole, with, for example, movements and lighting.
Basta is a piece of music from another generation. I wrote it in 1982 for Christian Lindberg, a famous trombonist. That was while he was still a student at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm; a kind of examination piece for him. For many years thereafter it was almost a mandatory encore for him, so he assured me that he’d played it at least 500 times after a few years. I think that sounds unlikely, but he maintains that with certainty. Nowadays it is performed by many others as well [nodding to Jimmy Olsson]. It prevails as an admission test at music colleges here and there around the world.
However, some of scenic qualities of the pieces from the 1960s occur in Basta too. As you just saw, the trombonist comes in from somewhere and cuts the piece expediently, after which he disappears just as quickly as he arrived.
From time to time I’m questioned what that means. When I wrote this piece, which incidentally, which you heard, is a very much virtuouso piece – the trombonist is very occupied all the time – I got the notion that this is like someone coming on stage with an urgent message to deliver. When he’s done that, when he’s filled his mission, it’s basta; “enough” in Italian, and he disappears again.
I don’t know what that urgent message is, no more than you; nor does anyone else…
The years passed, and I wrote more pieces for Christian Lindberg and for other brass musicians, for the horn player Sören Hermansson and the trumpet player Håkan Hardenberger. In 1992 there was a music festival in Stockholm, where Christian Lindberg had been entrusted with a late evening concert called Christian Lindberg and Friends or something. I think there only was one friend at that occasion, but a dear one; an old military service pal; Håkan Hardenberger. They served together in the army’s music platoon. You can do that nowadays. When I was called up for military service it was more suspect to play in the music corps…
Anyway, they needed a piece to play at that nocturnal concert at a Stockholm New Music Festival, so I wrote a duo for trumpet and trombone, under the influence of some pondering over sex roles. It’s a fact that the trumpet appears in a soprano position, while the trombone resides in a male voice position. However, no matter how female the trumpet is concerning its register, it is a pronounced macho instrument, which is often utilized in marshal and military contexts, while the trombone, in Bellman, is a male as well as sexual metaphor. In the last stanza of Fredman’s Epistle No. 49 – Solen glimmar blank och trind (The Sun is Gleaming, Bright and Tubby) – Movitz goes to bed with trombone (Old Swedish: basun).
Simultaneously, the sound of the trombone is soft and warm, and has, in my opinion, motherly qualities.
Those kind of thoughts colored my writing of this piece, which I called Tintomara; an androgynous being in Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s Törnrosens bok (Book of the Briar) [1834]. Tintomara has the characteristics of both man and woman, and in this piece the roles are exchanged some too.
Jimmy, where is your comrade?”
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Jimmy Olsson & Brynjar Kolbergsrud
performing Foke Rabe's Tintomara
Through the applause that followed Rabe’s introduction, Jimmy Olsson [trombone] and Brynjar Kolbergsrud [trumpet] took to the stage, to play Folke Rabe’s Tintomara, which they did. [Tintomara is available on Phono Suecia PSCD 67]
The pieces performed here will be – or have been – reviewed on other pages of Folke Rabe’s site at Sonoloco, so I will not get into any details here, but wind fast forward to the continuation of Folke’s introduction at Crescendo, as it commenced after Jimmy Olsson’s [trombone] and Brynjar Kolbergsrud’s [trumpet] Tintomara performance.
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Congratulations [directed at the audience] on having such fine brass players here in town! However, we’re forced to import trumpeters from Norway anyway!
Now follows a brass quintet. Tintomara is from 1992, and Basta from 1982. Somewhere in between I was asked to compose a piece for a brass quintet called The Swedish Brass Quintet, which I believe now is defunct. In those days it was constituted by musicians from Hovkapellet [The Royal Opera-House Orchestra].
This piece has a very simple form, based on two alternating principles; on the one hand moving sections with scale motions, not only major and minor, but a host of other variations, vouching for the title; Escalations (“scalings”, maybe, or something) – and on the other hand, between these scale sections, there are inserted chordal sections. This is the simple formal idea.
The musicians are Brynjar Kolbergsrud [trumpet], Oddbjørn Lund [trumpet], Lennart Langer [French horn], Jimmy Olsson [trombone] and Urban Stenqvist [tuba].
Please, gentlemen!
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Escalations
Escalations was, to me, one of the highlights of this concert; brilliant, gleaming, lean and magically transitory and transparent. Folke has told me that he at first, after composing the work, and a long time afterwards, had a hard time coming to terms with it, but he also says that he has come to grips with that now – and I hope so, knowing how much I appreciate the work, and also other music lovers that I’ve spoken to. It’s a brass hit for sure! [Escalations is available on BIS-CD-544]
After Escalations there was an intermission, when people could browse the establishment, or simply have some refreshments in the bar. There was a jolly mingling going on, information and email addresses were exchanged, and the atmosphere was vibrant and intense.
Mingling at intermission;
Torbjörn Sandén up front
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