Benjamin Staern Music Samples

Dedicated to Maestro Stefan Solyom. The word Jubilate has its standing point in the phenomenon of spectators cheering with an inner power of joy and the experience to be part of the powerful jubilation. Its counterpart; to boo out and causing a riot like crazy hooligans that are sabotizing the festivities in which can end into total destruction. These roles are present in today’s society on big events, mainly in sports and culture. Musically it is translated into two antithesis: tonal versus atonal, loud versus soft, organic to mechanic and so on. These developments break and dissolve during the course of the work that are uniting towards the end. Stefan Solyom, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City Halls, Glasgow 2010-02-25 UK PREMIERE

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm AB.

Jubilate - prelude for symphony orchestra

Yellow skies was composed in close collaboration with the flutist Terje Thiwång, to whom it is also dedicated.

The initiating process was from the start a solo piece for flute. But the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on the September 11th 2001 left an enormous impact and dreamt in a naive sense that you saw "a wounded place with yellow skies and red seas". The tape-part is based on recorded samples from the alto flute and normal flute. The work is divided in six parts and the harmony consists of six notes in two different modes.

Yellow skies was nominated as one of the Swedish representatives at the International Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music (IREM) in Rome 2004.

Yellow Skies

It begins with a reversed ’big-bang’ chord and suddenly the wandering begins between the high and low ”coloured” brass instruments. The harmony is distorted by micro-tones and feels like looking through broken glass.

Colour Wandering

Five Episodes for violin and guitar (2010). Commissioned by Duo Kemi; Jacob Kellermann and Daniel Migdal. 

Composed during Fall 2010 in Malmö and Leiden, Netherlands. This piece was composed in close collaboration with the aforementioned duo . 

Fem episoder

Muramaris means literally "the herd by the sea". It's an artist's resident (10 km from the town of Visby) in which was built some years after the turn of the 20th century. With its very ascetic frontal and its beautiful interior, you will get a feeling that it is soon going to collapse! The music starts from nothing and is projecting towards different directions in a surrealistic world. You will find also a fireplace made by sandstone and a sculpture portraying "the goddess of love", which is struck by the last sunbeams during midsummer time.
If you touch these items unnecessarily they will break down and vanish like a desert storm.

Performed by Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie and Stefan Solyom conducting, live recording from Die Glocke, Bremen november 27 2007.


Muramaris was composed during summer 2000 in Visby and partially at home in Malmö.


This piece is dedicated to the composer Mattias Svensson, teacher and head master at the Gotland School of Composition.




Muramaris

Since childhood I've always loved water and wants to compose series of pieces refering to ocean, sea, lakes, ponds and so forth as a point of reference.

Wave motion is a physical phenomenon that involves a field or a disturbance of a medium propagating in space. It is music that is gradually transformed as the piece goes on. It is like watching a wave that washes over one, a stunning spectacle, and that reflects like a mirror. You can also experience great rapids and streams along the course of the work.

 

From a musical perspective, I have tried to give the work shape based on a harmonic idea where things encounter one another, are reflected and create disturbances in various ways. This leads to a more developmental kind of thinking in the compositional process. Out of this one can clearly distinguish three parts that overlap. The form has a freely ternary form structure of ABA.

 

1. Rhythmic, suggestive exhortation

2. Melodic, mystical middle section

3. Chorale, when the elements above are mixed together

 

The instrumentation used are based from the classical period of Mozart and Beethoven which includes double winds, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani,percussion as glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba, cymbals, gong and strings. The sounds may give you the impression of the above mentioned composers but without quoting or imitating any piece in a post-modern way sending postcards from the past.

 

Wave-Movements was composed on commission from Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie and is dedicated to the conductor Daniel Raiskin.

 

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag AB, Stockholm

Excerpt Live from the world premiere performance at Görreshaus in Koblenz May 30th 2011
by permssion from Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie


Wave Movements - Excerpt Live World Premiere Staatsorch.Rhein.Phil./Daniel Raiskin

The title refers to crisis situations, for example in Kosovo during the years of 1998-1999. The first introductory measures express the threat of war in that region. The music is inspired by the shocking warfootage from newsbroadcasts on television and in daily newspapers. You can imagine yourself experiencing the warfare in your own country, the terror and being forced to escape. In the background underlies also folk-musical structures i.e african clave-rhythms (4:3 polyrhythm) as a connection with the crisis in the Kongo-Kinshasa region in which went on at the same time as in Kosovo.
This work was composed to the annual project called "The Composers of Tomorrow 2000"between the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra and the Academy of Music in Malmö. It was judged as "best orchestral work" by the musicians of the orchestra and was performed later on the Young Soloists Concert in the Concert Hall in Helsingborg.
Other important performances could be mentioned like the Young Nordic Music Festival (UNM) in Reykjavik, Iceland and Stockholm New Music 2003.
The Threat of War has been nominated by the Swedish Music Publishers Association (SMFF) Award in the category "The most significant contemporary music work of the year" in 2005.

Excerpt live from a performance with Norrköping SO and Stefan Solyom conducting on November 27th 2004
Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag AB, Stockholm.

The threat of war - Excerpt live Norrköping SO/Stefan Solyom Nov 2004

Live recording from the world premiere 16 February 2012
Karin Dornbusch, clarinets
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra
Stefan Solyom, conductor

Worried Souls 1. Introduction Excerpt

Live recording from the world premiere 16 February 2012 
Karin Dornbusch, clarinets 
Norrköping Symphony Orchestra 
Stefan Solyom, conductor

Worried Souls. 2. Rhapsody Excerpt

Worried Souls. 3. Meditation Excerpt

Tranströmersånger by Benjamin Staern. Live concert recording, Malmö (Sweden), as part of the New European Ensemble's 2010 Sweden Tour with artists Carina Vinke, New European Ensemble and Christian Karlsen conducting.

Tranströmersånger (Tranströmer Songs) was commissioned by New European Ensemble and dedicated to alto singer Carina Vinke and conductor  Christian Karlsen. There is a piano version available with the two intermezzos omitted.

The poems are from the collection The Sad Gondola, written by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer. The title is as such derived from a work for piano solo by Franz Liszt 
”La lugubre gondola”. Musically seen I wanted to bring out the lyric and dramatic moods in these poems there you can picture the poetic content as a ”music drama without a stage”.

Mixed and edited by Ronald Boersen.
Recorded live at Caroli Kyrka, Malmö 13 October 2010.

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm AB.

Tranströmersånger (2009-10) för alt och serenadensemble

Fluxus (means “to flow” in Latin).

It represents different kinds of flows that occur during the course of the piece. In this case it concerns with two elements: harmonic and rhythmic states.
You can easily divide this work into three sections:


1. Floating, harmonic

2. Rhythmical, dancing

3. Merging of these above-mentioned elements.


The listener is free to find out what exists in these sections.


Fluxus was commissioned to the Kumla Organ Festival 2008 and is dedicated to organist
Hans Fagius

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm AB

Fluxus

Percussion section from Malmö Opera Orchestra

Contrasts in motion - Live

Live from Suntory Festival 2008
Shinya Hashimoto, tuba
Kazuyoshi Akiyama; Tokyo Symphony Orchestra

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm AB

Sacrificio for tuba, live-electronics and orchestra

Performed by: Anna Larsson, alto
Sonanza Chamber Ensemble
Jan Risberg, conductor

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm AB.

Nattens djupa violoncell

First performance on March 1st 2009 at Palladium in Malmö
Johannes Möller, guitar

Recorded by the Swedish Radio.

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag, Stockholm AB.

Arpalinea

Live recording from the world premiere performance
Broadcasted on Jong Klassiek at VPRO
Christian Karlsen, conductor
New European Ensemble
White Crow Music Festival Opening Concert 11 nov 2010

Winner of SMFF Award Best Contemporary Music Work in Chamber Music of the Annual Music Publisher's Award 2011 in Stockholm
Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag AB, Stockholm.

Bells and Waves - chamber symphony in five movements

Benjamin Staern (b. 1978) started his musical experience with studies in cello, piano and percussion in his youth. Studies in musicology at Lund University and subsequently studied composition at the Malmö Academy of Music during 1998-2005 with Rolf Martinsson, Hans Gefors and Luca Francesconi, and made an early breakthrough, while still a student at the Malmö Academy of Music, with the symphonic work The Threat of War (1999). 

From this point on, Staern has developed a deeply personal style with an output including orchestral and chamber works, solo pieces and electroacoustic music. An interesting aspect of his work as a composer is his unusual ability to associate tones and timbres with different colours and tints. This is a variant of a phenomenon called synaesthesia which is fundamental in his perception and the creation of his music, and which is reflected in his sound world as well as in many of his work titles (Yellow Skies, Colour Wandering etc.) 

Today Staern receives commissions on a regular basis. Looking into the near future, he is commissioned to write a major work for Malmö Symphony Orchestra and song cycle for alto Anna Larsson and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. From September 2010 he is composer-in-residence with New European Ensemble for them he composed works from this collaboration such as Tranströmersånger (selected poems from the Sad Gondola - collection by Nobel-prize author and poet Tomas Tranströmer) and Bells and Waves (Chamber Symphony), winner of the SMFF Award 2011 in the category ”most important work in chamber music/smaller ensemble”.

Works by Benjamin Staern is today performed not only by all the major Swedish orchestras but also internationally by orchestras such as the MDR Sinfonieorchester, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Staern has collaborated with ensembles including New European Ensemble, Sonanza Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Aspekte and Stockholm Chamber Brass. Soloists include Håkan Hardenberger, Anna Larsson, Johannes Möller, Karin Dornbusch, Carina Vinke, Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, Philippe Cassard and conductors Michael Christie, Daniel Raiskin, Christian Karlsen, Mats Rondin, Mika Eichenholz and Stefan Solyom.

Benjamin Staern Music Samples

Benjamin Staern Composer