#Concert #review #Jacob #Mühlrads #clarinet #concert #Berwaldhallen
Music
Rating: 4. Rating scale: 0 to 5.
Sweden’s Radio Symphony Orchestra
Works by Felix Mendelssohn and Jacob Mühlrad
Conductor: Martin Fröst
Soloist: Magnus Holmander
Stage: Berwaldhallen, Stockholm
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Two evenings in the Berwaldhallen are almost sold out and at Wednesday’s premiere there were television cameras as well as the royal couple on site. Composer Jacob Mühlrad has gone from young and promising – diligently marketed like few – to an established thirty plus in a straight descending line from the early teacher Sven-David Sandström. With liturgical inspiration as a basis, he writes audience-oriented music that doesn’t just stroke the hair. For Sandström, it was Christianity. At Mühlrad, Jewishness has in turn found its way into the music. This time filtered through the Arabic tonal scale, maqam, which spans the religious boundaries of the Middle East.
Mühlrad likes capital letters and has given his newly written clarinet concerto the name “SEMA”, which alludes to the swirling dance of Sufism. The music begins with gongs and the whining sound of bullroars or humdrums, an ancient instrument swung on a rope, emphasizing the feature of rotation and ritual. The sound is reminiscent of an awakening primeval animal and against the background of a dull rumbling rises – or even rises – a clarinet voice.
At Mühlrad, Jewishness has found its way into the music. This time filtered through the Arabic tonal scale, maqam, which spans the religious boundaries of the Middle East.
In a conceptually conscious composer like Mühlrad, the humming circles fulfill even more of a visual than a sonorous function. In terms of sound processing, in this solo concert he otherwise resembles a religious version of Anders Hillborg. The thoughts go above all to his clarinet concerto “Peacock tales”, written for the clarinet phantom Martin Fröst who now stands at the desk, while Magnus Holmander takes care of the demanding preacher role as clarinet soloist at Mühlrad.
The form is primarily sound-sculpting rather than traditional three-part, but just when the stacking of effects becomes too tangible something unexpected happens. Like when a sudden, grand chord in the tin seems to open up to the sky or when Holmander breaks in with a delicately plucked clarinet solo. With “SEMA” Mühlrad has once again shown that he has mastered the orchestral format with his own signature. The same can be said about Fröst as a grounded conductor in Felix Mendelssohn’s third symphony, “The Scottish”, with fine contours and a fake folk tone.
The concert will be broadcast on Sweden’s Radio P2 on 3/5. The clarinet concert will also be shown on SVT on 4/5.
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