Polarhavet (Klas Torstensson)
(Polar Sea)
Even though Polarhavet is not intended to be a piece of program music, the title clearly inspiration. taken my I’ve indicates a hint of where (Actually, this was not the first time for me: my opera The Expedition, 1994– 1999 – about S. A. Andrée’s tragic balloon expedition to the North Pole in 1897 – has been called “the northernmost opera of all time”…). Thus Polarhavetis an abstract piece of music, and even the wind that we occasionally hear gives nothing away about its geographical or climatic origin. The large seashells (partially filled with water), played by the two percussionists far left and far right of the stage, produce – sporadically – soft gurgling sounds. Strange, tropical “foreign bodies” in these otherwise so quiet and desolate polar regions! As we all know, the northern ice cap is melting. Perhaps the summer of 2008 was the first summer in more than one hundred thousand years without a coherent ice cap? My piece was not originally intended as a memorial to a past ice age, but maybe unconsciously became one… Although with one important difference: my Arctic Ocean is still covered with ice! The massive, tonal tutti chords of Fastlandet (the first part of my Cycle of the North), sound – according to one critic – as “bright beams of lighthouses on a dark continent”.
In this second part, Polarhavet, the sea is quiet.To quote Jos Kunst, my much too early deceased composer colleague:“ Look, the sea is put to rest. It just moves gently back and forth.”
Klas Torstensson
Polarhavet is the second (independent) part of Cycle of the North.Polarhavet was a joint commission by the Swedish Radio (Sveriges Radio) / Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, for the Baltic Sea Festival (Östersjöfestivalen) 2008, and the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra (Norway), Stavanger European Capital of Culture 2008. The piece was composed with additional financial support from the Performing Arts Fund NL. Premiere: 27 August, 2008, in Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daniel Harding.
Duration: ca. 21 min.
