The 1st Concert Master of the Royal Orchestra in Stockholm, Semmy Stahlhammer, a pupil of no lesser teachers than Charles Barkel, Nathan Milstein, Isaac Stern and Henryk Szeryng, sets himself the hazardous task of supplying the simple and the traditional with a new interpretation and a new place in our turn of the century world, our turn of the millennium world.

The music on these CDs represent, to me with my rural frame of reference from the Swedish 1950s, the time of day when the smell from my mother’s pancakes in the kitchen blended in with tunes like these on the radio, because as I recall it there was a calm mid day hour when the radio aired things like these.

On two of the issues Stahlhammer appears together with Love Derwinger and Elisabeth Boström (piano) respectively, mainly performing pieces by Swedish composers, in versions for violin and piano, from the time of last turn of the century, when – of course - musical life was altogether different from now. A hundred years ago you had to play yourself, if you wanted to enjoy the music, and the instruments commonly at hand were the violin, and in the more well-off families the piano. Transcriptions of music for these instruments therefor were extremely popular.

Here we hear works by Hugo Alfvén, Armas Järnfelt, Richard Ohlsson, Emil Sjögren, Ture Rangström and many other, sometimes not so well known, composers.

The interpretations are throughout delicate, sensitive, intimate, clear – exactly as mid day calm and pancake smelly as the reminiscences from the rural kitchen suggest – and the atmosphere is exactly as intimate as it was in the turn-of-the-century homes when people gathered to hear great music in the small and close format.
The style is more often than not of a nature lyrical and national romantic idiom, as the spirit of the age prescribed, and exposed in a simple and sometimes dramatic guise.

This is probably music for the one who finds himself in safe and secure circumstances, and who can rest in the embrace of a warm home, ensured a steady income and the love of a family, but there’s nothing wrong with that! For sure there are many who can find delight in such a fortunate bourgeois existence, and in a secure commonplace warmth like that this music is perfectly suiting. The lone and torn, and perhaps more avantgardistic, probably would be driven over the edge by these conscientious and benevolent sounds, though…

It would be easy to disregard this genre as a bagatelle, as something irrelevant to artistic creativity, and maybe just because of this these discs fill a crack in the flow of present releases. The label Nosag is a bit daring, releasing all these CDs simultaneously, which honors them! We need more daring and unexpected projects, and when the interpretations are so exemplary, technically and artistically, you have to bow to Nosag and extend your gratitude! An appreciative nod in the direction of the Swedish Council of Cultural Affairs is also called for, since the honorable institution partly financed the project.

The third two-CD-release, “Opera I & II”, is a little different in everything but the instrumentation. It offers works in the same mini format, but by non-Swedish composers like Georges Bizet, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Erich Korngold, George Gershwin, Camille Saint- Saëns etcetera, and thereby the time frame is also widened considerably from the turn-of-the-century perspective that the other releases were anchored in. The pianist here is Ivetta Irkha.
This double-CD is just as well done as the others, but the impression is less convincing. It might have to do with my personal preferences, because there are no technical or artistic flaws.

For the undersigned, who admires old violinists like Eugene Ysaye and Efram Zimbalist, not to mention Fritz Kreisler and Jascha Heifetz, it feels extra thrilling to listen to a contemporary Swedish violinist who isn’t over-shadowed by these giants, and who comes to terms with the seemingly simple and disregarded, and turns it into great art! The hardest thing of all for an artist is to make justice to the simple and the clear, which otherwise so easily falls victim to imitation, cheapness and sentimentality. Semmy Stahlhammer and his pianists stay clear of these pitfalls, and follow through with discipline, restraint and a metric balance that astounds. Without any sidelong glances the make justice to the material!