Her is a mighty force in Swedish music, Sven-David Sandström (b1942), and has been a dominant influence for decades. He is also a man of surprises, especially when it first dawned on people that he wasn’t at all submissive to the dominant style and fashion of composing, when he suddenly produced works that could sound utterly anti-modernist and anti-post-modernist. That happened in the 1980s, when the modernism of art music – especially in the field of chamber music – was frantically trying to be fashionably modern, grotesque and sort of art-music-punky… Sandström kept his dignity and his integrity, and kept right on doing what was right for him, aesthetically, artistically, morally. This could also mean that he presented works that could be very modernistic – but it was never in order to join a style, fall within a genre. He has always had purely artistic viewpoints on his works, without frustrating side-glances on the opportunistic tendencies. Such integrity and artistic stature carves a clear outline round a contemporary composer, and here he is, on a CD with choral works ranging from 1978 to 1996, right through the age modernism!

Sandström is a man of many genres – or you could also say; of no genres. He strolls haphazardly between styles, almost toying with them, like musical juggler. His oeuvre is large and wide, ranging from frantically experimental jerks and jolts of atonalities to the most somber, serene medieval purity, to romantic and grandiose concertos.

As Sandström began writing works that would fall outside of modernist clichés, he also found himself crowded with new listeners, who couldn’t really appreciate all the experimentation, or who were just looking for other qualities besides a striking or appalling guise! It was typically by way of his choral works that the interest among common listeners grew and flourished in the beginning of the 1980s.

Sandström says that it was the text that had meant all the difference to him. William Blake – the visionary and enfant terrible from the 18th century – and the contemporary Tobias Berggren both set off revealing motions within Sandström. The composer felt that he had been hiding behind an efficiency and accomplishment front, not daring to be himself in front of others.
However, Sandström sang in the Hägersten Motet Choir one day a week for many years, as a second tenor, so he had learned the ins and outs of choir art through participation.

“A Cradle Song / The Tyger” (which gave the CD its title) from William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence and of Experience” was a work of departure when it was conceived in 1978, and it was premiered by one of the foremost choirs in the world; the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir. The opposing qualities in this text are at full play in Sandström’s piece, but the thing that really hit home – or caused a stir – was the flair of romanticism that seeped through the notes… This piece is placed as number 4 on the CD.

The first piece is a paraphrase on “Anthem” by Henry Purcell – and unfinished work by the master, to which Sandström attaches a continuation of sobs and sighs and intense prayers to God, until he web of sounds fall back into a rest of sorts…

Tomas Tranströmer is always of interest to composers of vocal works. “April och tystnad” (“April and Silence” was chosen by Sandström for this issue. It moves in ever so slightly, drone-like, hovering over the old winter ices in the archipelago. The tonal structure borders on the world of Arvo Pärt, and thereby also on the medieval in its purity. “…I am carried in my shadow, like a violin in its black casing… The only thing I want to say glitters out of reach, like the silver at the pawnbroker’s…”

Tobias Berggren’s text from “Etyd nr. 4, som I E-moll” (“Etude No. 4, as in E-minor”) is the longest piece on the CD, with its 18 minutes. That probably shows the importance that Sven-David Sandström attaches to this text. A contemporary of Sandström, Berggren has had an immense influence on the composer, and they have worked together on big projects like the requiem “De ur alla minnen fallna” (Those Out of All Remembrances Fallen”), for the children of the Holocaust. This text originates in Tobias Berggren’s cycle “24 romantiska etyder” (“24 Romantic Etudes”), inspired by Frederic Chopin.

Two biblical texts round off this intriguing release from Phono Suecia; “A New Heaven and A New Earth” out of the Revelation of St. John and an “Agnus Dei”. There is much beauty in these religious compositions, which also harbor a knife-point of dark doubt…

Eric Ericson and his Chamber Choir soar at the very highest level of performance practice, but they always do, and we would expect no less from them... but we extend our thanks and well wishes to them anyway! They mean a world of difference!

It strikes me how much of the music on this CD that is… - music! It’s timeless, of no certain period or mode or style, but speaks directly to the human heart – and that is a rare thing to happen.