Staerns spellista Tonsättareseminarie

Staern Orkesterverk

Worried Souls

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

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

Recorded live from De Spil, Roeselare, Belgium with Jeroen Berwaerts and Stockholm Chamber Brass.

This piece was commissioned by Rikskonserter for Håkan Hardenberger and Stockholm Chamber Brass that was first-performed in Båstad Chamber Music Festival 2007. It's all about confrontations of different sorts; arguments, clashes, pushing things headlong to the edge that drives you into insane moments in life and also on the web. The soloists sends messages to the brass quintet in which responds in different manners during the piece and is divided into three movements without a break inbetween. 

Confrontation For Solo Trumpet And Brass Quintet - Live from De Spil, Roeselare Belgium

I wanted for a long time to write music that is danceable and can in many ways be physically received when listening to it. Godai means " the five great elements " in Japanese and has a background in Japanese philosophy about martial arts and is a Buddhist term with some influences from Hinduism. The Buddhist philosophy is perhaps best known in the West for their use by the samurai Miyamoto Musashi's famous text, The Book of Five Rings, which he explains different aspects of swordsmanship and martial arts by assigning every aspect of each element. The different properties are interconnected and also to keep the balance between these elements. The five elements are formed on the basis of the well-known basic elements: earth, water, fire , air, and the fifth element is a shadow , ie . the sum of all elements into one unit . The . In the instrumentation included except triple woodwind, brass, strings, harp, celesta, piano and percussion, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, glockenspiel, tubular bells, gong, xylophone, marimba for more Asian instruments like i.e. opera-gongs, java gongs, china cymbal, temple bowls and crotales (antique cymbals).
The work is divided into four movements, performed without interruption. 
 
Recorded and broadcasted live on Swedish Radio P2.
15 May 2014
Malmö Konserthuset
Marc Soustrot
Malmö Symphony Orchestra

Godai Sats 1 Excerpt

In Sacrificio (sacrifice) the solo tuba is the sacrifice which performs a ritual that goes from noise to pitch while the orchestra goes in opposite direction, from pitch to noise. The electronic sounds provide a link between the soloist and the orchestra. The work is built around a formula played by the tuba in the introduction where the playing instructions says ”quasi cantus firmus” (almost plain chant). What differs from an ordinary cantus firmus (rhythmically simple and ascetic melodic line) is that it is more expressive and dynamic, which in turn generates material that is further processed in the concerto. 
Sacrificio is divided in three parts with two separate solo cadenzas in between; the first with electronic sounds and the second without. 

Dedicated to Luca Francesconi, Kjetil Myklebust.

Live recording from the world premiere Konserthuset Malmö 6 september 2005.

First performance
Kjetil Myklebust, tuba
composer, electronics
Malmö Symphony Orchestra
Tuomas Olilla-Hannikainen

Sacrificio Uruppf. 6 sept Malmö

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

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.

Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag AB, Stockholm.

The Threat of War

Writing for the clarinet and bass clarinet also is a challenge but also there are fantastic possibilities available that has affected work on the solo part and orchestration and vice versa. 
The origins of this concerto and its title  refers to "an artists' worried souls in an industrial and harsh dystopian society". The music conveys curiosity, spontaneity, playfulness, violence, hard decisions, hopelessness and ultimately its downfall! There is also a sharp criticism of the closures of well-established company that quickly builds up and eventually dismantled because of its time of decadence.

There is a narrative behind the music but the composer has chosen to tell it in the music rather than literally describing exactly what happens in the musical events but want to give freedom to the listener to imagine the way it sounds and what you get for shows.

First movement Introduction - has a sad and searching character as if you were in a fog. The clarinet is expressed in the score "espressivo con melancolia" (expressive of melancholy) and the orchestra is always restrained by then erupts in a huge roar. Clarinet becomes hysterical, and this leads to a dizzying cadenza with the orchestra's clarinets and which eventually fades the kit.

Live performance from the world premiere 16 February 2012, Karin Dornbusch, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Stefan Solyom.

Benjamin Staern

Worried Souls 1. Introduction

Second movement Rhapsody - takes up material from the first movement, which then worked freely with different expressions as well as comic absurdity, tough decisions, disparate emotions, mechanical rhythm "Come un 'Robotnik' (Russian term for automatons). This leads to a "fight" between soloist and orchestra that subsequently leads to a collective "marcia meccanico" (mechanic march) where everyone is forced to work on at a rapid pace and scale.

Worried Souls 2. Rhapsody

Third movement Meditation - starting with a fast collapse to then as a phoenix from the ashes rises from the deep bass-clarinet and reflect back toward the previous events. This builds up to a pounding orchestral interludes. This leads to a short solo cadenza and then to an orchestral ”total chaos” that ends with an almost voiceless coda.

Live performance from the world premiere 16 February 2012, Karin Dornbusch, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Stefan Solyom.

Worried Souls 3. Meditation

Lauri Metsvahi; slagverk
Blåsarsymfonikerna
Cathrine Winnes

16 mars 2019, Musikaliska, Stockholm
Svensk musikvår 2019
Uruppförande!

Konnakol Variations - Uruppförande 20190316

En mididemo utav Pippi lyfter hästen. 

Komponerades på beställning från Sveriges Radio P2 .
Framfört av Noteperfomer Slave Players!

Pippi Lyfter Hästen Demo

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.

Worried Souls 1. Introduction

Benjamin Staern Composer