Bethoveen - Moonlight Sonata, Für Elise, Piano Music

Featured here are three of my ten sonatas (five for piano, two for violin and piano, two for classical guitar, and one for solo violin) my second string quartet, a couple of my song cycles and a selection of lone standing pieces for choir, piano and organ.

A musical portrait

Organ music by David Unger

These are my biggest works in multiple movements, such as my sonatas, my cantata and my string quartet. It also includes some of my song cycles (most notably my Op. 7 song cycle "I drömmarnas spår" is missing since there is no complete recording of it, as of yet). 

Works in multiple movements

This is a short Violin Sonata in the classical style, named Amadeus since the first movement is heavily influenced by the early Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
It consists of three movements:

1. Allegro giocoso (Sonata form) 
2. Adagio poco doloroso (ABA form) 
3. Tempo di minuetto (Minuet and Trio) 

The "Amadeus" sonata was composed almost by accident after a class in chamber music where I had to substitute for the pianist in Mozarts Eb Sonata Kv. 26.
As I came home after rehearsal I composed the first movement and the similarities with the Mozart are clearly heard in the beginning of the movement.
A couple of days later I composed a complementary Minuet and Trio and thought the work was finished.
A month later however I felt that the work needed a contrast so I decided to complete it by composing a short slow movement in the parallell minor (fun fact: this is actually the first time I have ever composed in the key of B minor) 
The movements are bound together by their opening motives which all have a similar figuration.

Sonata No. 2 "Amadeus" in D Major Op. 25, for violin and piano (complete)

Ludovico Einaudi - Una Mattina

"5. Prelude in D minor (BuxWV 140 )" from "Complete Organ Works" by Dieterich Buxtehude

This is my second string quartet, composed in September 2024.
"Den grälsjuka" means The quarrelsome and refers to the conflict between the violins at the beginning of the first movement, when the second violin tries to "correct" the phrase endings of the first violin, who only after eight measures follows suit and does what the second violin (and in the fifth measure even the viola) tries to get it to do.

It is composed in three movements:

1. Allegretto con spirito
2. Adagio sostenuto
3. Tempo di minuetto

String quartet No. 2 in A Major "Den grälsjuka" Op. 32 (midi recording)

This is my second guitar sonata composed in January 2025, performed live in Vetlanda church March 25th 2025 by guitarrist Eric Lammers.

Sheet music to be published by Bergmann Edition alongside my first Sonata in D Major late 2025 to early 2026.

Guitar sonata No. 2 "The autumn evening" in a minor Op. 33 No. 2 (live performance).

Plus tôt

Song cycle composed in 2013 to texts by Hoffmann von Fallersleben. 

1. Frühlingsgruss
2. Schmetterling
3. Hinaus ins Freie!
4. Die Waise
5. Frühlings Ankunft

David Unger, baritone
Natalja Shakova, piano

Recorded live in Ceciliakapellet, Oskarshamns Folkhögskola October 1 2019.

The Frühlingslieder were written almost by accident while I was working on my op. 7 song cycle "I drömmarnas spår".
As I was searching for a way to tie that song cycle up I felt I needed a relief and started singing songs from Robert Schumann's Liederalbum fur die Jugend at the piano. All of these texts are also set to music in that very album. 
I found the rather small songs so delightful and fun to sing that I decided to write my own little collection in the same style.
Whether or not I managed? You tell me!
But after composing the first song of this cycle I finally found the inspiration to compose the fifth song of I drömmarnas spår as well, and so I ended up with two song cycles instead of one(!).

Fünf Frühlingslieder Op. 8, (live performance)

This is a short prelude and fugue written for a collegue at work, back in 2019 (this is the revised version from 2023).
The two movements are connected by the theme of the prelude which comes back as countersubject in the fugue. 

Since I work in educating church cantors I have long wanted to write an organ fugue.
But since I do not play the organ myself, it didn't come naturally, until I listened to Bach's prelude and fugue in D Major, and found that an organ fugue can actually be humourous as well as well constructed by all the rules that comes with the genre.
I hope that my piece conveys some of that sense of humour as well as being contrapuntally sound, albeit being a much smaller and, if I dare say so, less pretentious work.

Prelude and fugue in C Major Op. 20, for organ (midi recording)

This is my first complete sonata, originally composed as a three movement work (without the Adagio) in 2016 for students at the school where I work and dedicated to my late father. It was later revised with the addition of the slow movement in March 2021. It is in four movements:

1. Moderato (Sonata-allegro form)
2. Adagio "In memoriam" (Slow movement sonata form) 
3. Tempo di minuetto (Minuet and Trio) 
4. Allegro vivace "Hunt" (Sonata-allegro form)

The "Hunting sonata" (Jaktsonaten in its original Swedish title) began as a one movement work for unaccompanied viola called "Jakt" (Hunt or Chase in English) due to its never ending streak of sixteenth notes, and plans to make it into a larger work came only after a lecture in composition for which I prepared an example, which was to become the third movement. As I had already composed Jakt and didn't really know what to do with it I revised it and added the piano part of what was to become the fourth movement. 
Having composed two movements, of which one was originally called Hunt I thought I'd compose an opening movement as well. And when composing an opening movement  to complement a movement called Hunt it came natural that it should be based upon a hunting call.
Hence the original three movement sonata was complete.
But as it fell, at the time of putting the work together my father fell ill and was hospitalised. So I decided that I would finish it as a positive work to celebrate his homecoming. Unfortunately he passed away while in hospital and never came home and I stopped working on the piece in early 2017.
It was only on my late father's birthday in 2021 that I brought it up once again and composed the second movement, with it's own subtitle "In memoriam".
And so the four movement sonata was finally complete. 
A work that started almost by accident, but in time became my longest work to date.
I hope you enjoy it and that it sounds coherent, despite being composed in the way it was.

Sonata No. 1 "Hunting sonata" in G Major Op. 13, for violin and piano (midi recording))

This is my string quartet in d minor.
The name Ave Maria comes from a short quotation of my song Ave Maria in the middle of the second movement.
It consists of three movements:

1. Allegro poco drammatico
2. Allegretto - Andante - Allegretto
3. Allegro molto agitato - Tempo di marcia - Allegro molto agitato

The score has been published by Gusthold Music Publisher and can be found here:

www.gustholdmusic.com

The String quartet in d minor started as an example on the white board during a lecture on part writing for strings. The white board example can still be heard unchanged as the first eight bars of the second movement.
The eight bars then turned into a full movement as I was teaching contrasts and how to possibly build upon a first material.
To that movement I later added the first and third movements to create a complete work for the school's string quartet.
Since the students were all rather early in their development all parts are written completely in first position on all instruments.
In May 2020 the work was published by Gusthold Music Publisher in USA. 

String quartet No. 1 in d minor "Ave Maria" Op. 12 (complete)

Soprano: Cecilia Alrikson
Piano: Terés Löf

1. Escape at bedtime (text: Robert Loius Stevenson)
2. The more loving one (text: Wystan Hugh Auden)
3. The angel (text: William Blake)

Recorded live at Västervik Chamber Music Festival August 14, 2020.

Some have said that this may be the best pieces I have written all together. Whether that is true or not I leave to others to decide. But writing these songs I was very inspired, not least by Liza Lehmann, whom I had just discovered at the time, and her wonderful song cycle "The daisy chain" where she too sets Stevenson's Escape at bedtime, although her song is called Stars.
Inspired by her writing I set the first two songs in this cycle within two days in the fall of 2014.
The final song, set to a poem from Blake's "Songs of experience" is written in a more Schumannesque fashion, with the odd feature of starting in Major and ending in Minor.
All together, the three songs represent the protagonists relation to the night from childhood, through adolecense and old age, starting off rather naive but gradually becoming more serious and ending with an outburst. 

Three nocturnal songs Op. 11 (live performance)

This is my second piano sonata "Joie de vivre" in C Major.
It consists of four movements in the following sequence:

1. Allegro molto (Sonata-allegro form) 
2. Scherzo (Scherzo and Trio) 
3. Andante semplice (ABA form) 
4. Allegro giocoso (Seven part Rondo form)

This is my second "Grand Sonata", following my Violin sonata No. 1, including both a dance movement and a slow movement, in this case the second movement is a Scherzo.

The first movement starts with a scalar motif inspired by Maria Hester Park's C Major sonata op. 7, but whereas she uses the scalar figure to develop a very fluent lyrical theme in the style Mozart I am more influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven and Joseph Haydn in the exposition, with its short contrasting phrases and sudden shifts in dynamics. The development following is however in pure Mozart in style starting in the tonic minor and moving through g minor and D Major before cadencing in A Major and then moving back through a dramatic passage over the circle of fifths. 

The second movement is an a minor Scherzo which owes its opening figure to the piano concerto of Robert Schumann, but what follows is a typically classical Scherzo, with a C Major Trio section with much reminicense of the style of Haydn's Minuets. 

The third movement, in F major, is written in a mostly two voice texture influenced by the figured bass style of the Baroque (some have told me they get a "feeling" if not a direct influence of Domenico Scarlatti). 

The last movement is in a Haydnesque contrapuntal style with formal influences from the seven part rondos of Sofia Dussek. Influences of Muzio Clementi are also strong in this movement which rounds off the sonata by stating its three themes in the same key order as the previous movements (A is in C Major as the first movement, B in A minor as the second and C in F major as the third movement was).

The work is dedicated to my wife Desiree with much love. 

Piano Sonata No. 2 "Joie de vivre" in C major Op. 23 (midi recording)

I am a music teacher at Oskarshams Folkhögskola, where I teach classical singing, composition, music theory and chamber music. 
I am also a singer with primarily art songs on my repertoire, a hobby composer and poet and a founding member of the Mönsterås Jazz and Chamber Music Society.
I studied composition at Ingesund College of Music and Baroque counterpoint at Uppsala University and mostly write vocal music for song and piano, and/or choir but eventually compose for other instruments and ensembles as well.
I have been called "a radiant talent in finding the essentials in different musical styles" (Arvika Nyheter, December 4, 2006) and regional news paper Barometern wrote that my music shows "good insight in choice of melody and harmonic part writing" (September 25, 2012).
My music has been performed in Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Sweden and USA.

Notable works are:

"Three nocturnal Songs Op. 11", song cycle of three songs for soprano and piano. Premiered by Cecilia Alrikson and Natalja Shakova in Oskarshamn, Sweden in 2018.

"Night songs Op. 6", song cycle of five songs for baritone and piano. Premiered by Anthony Schneider and Rosemary Barnes in Vienna, Austria in 2013.

"Ave Maria - String quartet in d minor Op. 12", string quartet in three movements. Published by Gusthold Music, USA in 2020.

"Av hjärtat, sjung! Op. 22", cantata in five movements for STB soloists, SATB and childrens choir, string quartet and piano. Comissioned for the opening concert of the four day festival "L'Esprit - upplev 1700-talet" (L'Esprit - Experience the 18th century) in 2020.

"Joie de vivre - Piano sonata No. 2" Op. 23, sonata in four movements for solo piano. Composed in 2020.

"Jaktsonaten - Violin sonata No. 1 Op. 13", sonata in four movements for violin and piano. Composed in 2016.
 
I have been published by:

Gusthold Music Publisher (www.gustholdmusic.com) 
- String quartet in D minor "Ave Maria Op. 12" (May 2020)

Flauto d'Amore Editions
(www.flautodamoreproject.com)
- Danza, for Flauto d'Amore or C-flute (June 2020)

Psalmportalen (www.psalmportalen.se)
- Three congregational hymns (Herre Gud, vi lovar dig, När det känns som att allt ljus försvinner and Ett litet barn, Marias son) (Summer 2017)

I hope you will find something here to listen to that you will enjoy!

Photography for my profile image: Anna Broette

Prelude and fugue in C Major Op. 20, for organ (midi recording)

David Unger | Composer