Helen Jahren is in the heyday of her career, no doubt, with two main releases on major Swedish labels within months of each other. She recently issued a CD called “Oboe Concertos” on Caprice Records, with classical material. Here on Phono Suecia Records she appears as masterly interpreter in modern pieces of purely Swedish origin.

Helen Jahren is an artist of exceptional skill and endurance, and has been marked top notch by one and all, and I don’t mind spending the night tonight with her… i.e. her CDs…! About fifty works have been written exclusively for her, and she has meant more to oboe awareness and playing than any other contemporary musician.

She studied with wonder musician Heinz Holliger, and now she’s a wonder musician herself, which is amply demonstrated throughout this well-disposed Phono Suecia recording. The line of portrait CDs from Phono Suecia is getting extensive, and its stature benefits greatly from the participation of Helen Jahren.

Each of the three composers represented herein have written two works, one ensemble or orchestra piece and one solo piece. Jahren is an expert player in both settings; at interplay with others or by herself in her splendor of sparkling tonalities.

Daniel Börtz (b.1943) gets the first go, as Jahren swirls into his grand orchestration “Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra” (1987). After the orchestra sets its foot down hard Jahren speaks and chatters freely through her oboe, taking off in flutter around the stage like a butterfly across a summer’s meadow full of flowers and insects and Bronze Age grave mounds. The impression gets rather French, though, for a while, but much is happening here, as the events progress, as the orchestral percussion gets wild and disparate. Long alarm calls out of the oboe startles everyone for a while, but the drums and the percussion gets the upper hand, mighty and thunderous – in beautiful tonal cataclysms… until it all dies down into an introspective stillness wherein Jahren paints faint, thin, gracious lines with her oboe, golden with a backdrop of blue sky, like in a Greek tale; Mediterranean! The oboe takes on the guise of a bird, like in an early Sven-Erik Bäck opera, and my fantasy moves quickly in this music, to fairytales and enchanted forests – or maybe enchanted states of mind, a Bardo Thödol in a between-lives situation, where Jahren’s oboe provides the guidance to Buddha-hood?

The second piece by Börtz is the solo piece “Kithairon for Oboe Solo” (1991). It is a modernist piece of a rather jerky, at times playful, wit. The composer here alludes on Greek mythology and the mountain of the god Dionysus. It’s a colorful small-scale composition, rich in contrast and with wide seismic readings. Unusual performance practices are also applied, like just sounding the clattering drop leaves.

Lars Ekström’s (b.1956) first entry is his “Concerto for Oboe and Chamber Orchestra; Fragile Chain” (1983 / 1999). The ensemble setup allows for a clarity of unusual, almost Stockhausenesque, quality, in the tonal web, with its luminous, transparent luster. It is a “typical” modernist piece, which might have been written in the 1950s in Darmstadt, but by that I do not mean to belittle it. Quite the opposite; this is very exciting music, with a careful Indian scout feel, as you go tip-toeing across the prairie, avoiding any enemy tribes… This beautiful and exact piece falls well into its tradition, without any surprises, but with the joy of beauty and the breath of perfection.

Ekström’s solo piece is named “The Accelerating Piece of Ice for Oboe Solo” (1988). Down an oscillating line of thought the oboist steps with one foot on the sidewalk, one in the gutter – and all this on wet asphalt with leaves sticking to it, and car headlights reflecting off the watery streets; Manhattan… or Nyköping… or… Shitville? Here is a lonely poet, drunk and gesticulating, trying to catch the attention of passers by, who all are trying to avoid the appalling figure, staggering along in the shadows… and he withdraws inside his trench coat, pulls the hat down and drifts off into a Mickey Spillane story, as we lose sight of the misplaced individual.

Göran Gamstorp (b.1957) isn’t one of my priorities in life. I heard his “Growings”, and it made me really angry at the way he completely wasted the usage of a whole symphony orchestra at that time. It was disgraceful, shameful. I wrote a review of it that was so harsh that even the sometimes wretched editor of the Scandinavian magazine Gränslöst didn’t dare to publish it, in fear of being sued, I suppose. (I will publish it elsewhere on this site, maybe with the risk of getting sued myself… but it might be worth it: I seldom find anything really lousy and downright untalented, but that time I did!)
Gamstorp’s piece for orchestra on this CD is called “Pulselife – Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra” (1991). It shows that even the composer of the afore-mentioned catastrophe of a composition can learn and develop into something better. The concerto has a big, over-shadowing curve, but beneath small events slip in and out, like lizards under the leaves of fall. The title isn’t misleading, meaning that there is a pulse in the music; sometimes articulated, sometimes simply understood. However, it is hard for me to feel any of the sensitivity or artistic creativity of the other pieces on the CD in Gamstorp’s effort, which is sad, since it is the longest work on the CD…

Gamstorp’s solo piece is “Pulse II: At the End of the Beginning for Oboe Solo” (1993). This is a nice solo piece, and Helen Jahren’s playing makes it worthwhile. It stands center-stage, turning and twisting, gazing at the ceiling, looking all around, like a bewildered ballerina waiting for instructions from the choreographer.

With the exception of the main Gamstorp piece, this CD is a splendid issue, confirming the splendor, expertise and vibrant inspiration of oboist Helen Jahren.