This is a series of excerpts from Anders Hultqvist's version of Beethoven's fifth symphony, from the premiere with the Gothenburg symphony orchestra and Andrew Manze.

Beethoven 5th four excerpts

During a residency with the Landscape Quartet I recorded this Aeolian guitar with strings suspended to a tree down by the sea by the harbor in Gävle, Sweden. Part of a large scale group composition, this is the first section in the guitar part. No electronics or overdubs. This was played by myself and the wind on April 2 2014.

Tracks and Traces (Aeolian Guitar recorded by the sea in Gävle)

A short section from Cage Passim a larger open form composition by Bill Brooks which in turn forms the last movement of "Footnotes" (1983-86) a project that works its way through the history of American music from Ragtime to John Cage in a series of solo guitar pieces. Cage Passim "C" is here post-produced to reproduce the sound of a Wes Montgomery club gig. The music is realized from a dotted structure drawing on compositional techniques developed by Cage. The recordings were made in the studios at the Music Department, York University and engineered by Jez Wells. (great work on this preliminary test of the post-production procedures for the piece). 

Cage Passim C

In Memory of…
This piece, titled In Memory of..., was released on Caprice Records in 2008 in a box with the complete works of Per Nørgård for solo guitar. The title of the piece demands an explanation: it is dedicated to Giertrud Birgitte Bodenhof (1779-1798), buried at the Assistens cemetery opposite the composer’s Copenhagen apartment at the time the work was written. She was only 17 when her husband died after five months of marriage. Her short life ended two years later. The form of the piece can be seen as the reflection of a short and intense life, pulsating and expansive in its first two thirds, settling in the third, and finally dying out in the fourth and last section “andante serioso como una marcia funebre”. But it is not some sort of programme music but an association on the composer’s part, actually independent of the work’s origin. 
However, this is just the prelude to a fascinating and confusing story: at the time he wrote the dedication, the composer was still unaware of the speculation that had been common currency since Giertrud Birgitte’s burial. Rumour had it that the girl had been buried alive, and only appeared to be dead. When grave-robbers opened her tomb, horrified to find her alive (and afraid to be recognised!), they killed her before fleeing! What is musically odd about this story is that In Memory of... is a transcription of material from the composer’s opera Siddhartha, the part in which Siddhartha dances, unaware of the death and misery that blights the world outside his palace. Similarly, without stretching one’s metaphors, one might say that the characteristic floating music that pervades the whole work throughout constitutes a kind of carefree dance by a memorial to unsuspected ruthlessness, violence and early death.
The piece is here performed in an arrangement for 10-stringed guitar, written with the purpose of realising its harmony in full. A longer text on the piece and the transcription was published in a separate paper in the booklet to the CD box under the title, “Transcription: interpretation and construction”.


In Memory Of… (version For 10 - String Guitar)

Cây Trúc Xinh is a Vietnamese folk song, here performed as a layer in an piece building also on a mode from Swedish folk music.  A particular sonority also emerges from the blend of the Latin-American charango with the viola d'amore. The recording was made in the first workshop with "Lydarslått", a trio project with The Six Tones and the Swedish fiddle player Mats Edén. 

Cây Trúc Xinh

Another track from the first rehearsal for the Lydarslått project with The Six Tones and the Swedish fiddle player Mats Edén. Here, a folk song from the Quan Ho tradition in northern Vietnam is layered with a Norwegian folk song in a similar mode, "Han som sto oppatt av grava" (freely adapted after Eivind Hamre). The Vietnamese electric guitar functions a bit like a glue between the two songs. 

Xe Chỉ Luồn Kim

In this short track from the Lydarslått rehearsal in Mats Edén's house on August 27, we had just been playing a long piece in a major key and then we shifted to a different mode and out came this little dance. 

Imaginary Folk Dance I

Here's a version of Dowland's Forlorne Hope Fancy from a CD recording session some time ago (N.B. not what is coming out on CD eventually!)

John Dowland: Forlorne Hope Fancy

As part of the global World Wide Webern-event, violinist Katt Hernandez and guitarist Stefan Östersjö (playing the 5-str banjo in this piece) took the initiative to hold a durational performance. In the Black Room at the Inter Arts Center, Karlheinz Essl's installation piece, Webern Urwerk ran from morning to evening. Every 15 minutes, a short musical phrase with Carillon sounds is generated which is based on Webern's last but unfinished composition. In the trio, it sounds at the beginning and end of the piece in which we were joined by the Vietnamese dan tranh player Nguyen Thanh Thuy. 

After Webern. Trio With Banjo

Invisible sounds is a sound installation recorded in Piteå Port in September, in collaboration between Östersjö and the composer Anders Hultqvist and Jan Berg, professor of Sound engineering at Luleå University of Technology. The project draws out sonic layers from the site that are beyond human perception using sensor technology and hydrophones. Further, an aeolian guitar, performed by Östersjö, captures and shapes harmonics on long strings stretched around objects in the harbour. A first version of the piece was premiered at the Intonal Festival at Inkonst in April 2019. The present track is a short representation of this durational sound installation.

Invisible Sounds Piteå Port Short Mix

Track from "Signal in Noise", the forthcoming double CD on dB Productions, Sweden, with the Vietnamese/Swedish group The Six Tones with guest artists from Hanoi, here with Tri Minh and Vu Nhat Tan on electronics.

Oán một

Another track from "Signal in Noise", the forthcoming double CD on dB Productions, Sweden, with The Six Tones (Nguyen Thanh Thuy, dan tranh, Ngo Tra My, dan bau, Henrik Frisk, saxophones and electronics, Stefan Östersjö, Ty Ba, electric and acoustic guitars). 

Tre (bamboo)

This is part of a series of realisations of Ole Lutzow-Holm's composition Traces of Oblivion that I made with the laptop improviser Jakob Riis in 2012. 


Spår av glömska (Traces of Oblivion)  for 11-stringed alto guitar is the outcome of an extensive collaboration with Stefan Östersjö, who commissioned the piece, exploring a vast number of techniques and strategies founded on the particular timbral qualities of the instrument. In the end the piece itself came to consist of a selection of significant models, contours, gestures – partly as material for the written score, partly in the shape of pre-recorded sound files that may be played back and processed during the concert by a co-performer. These may then in turn be superimposed, looped and mixed, serving as the basis of a 4-8 channel sound installation modified for a suited venue, either complimentary to the live rendering or standing alone.
Through transient, winding or stationary passages and repetitive patterns Traces of Oblivion establishes its individual character by continually returning to images that seem connected to a sense of loss. One important aspect of the interpretation of the piece has been the concept of a malleable, wavering and uncompleted music whose formal residence is a sounding archive. The idea and purpose of the archive is that it be understood and performed in countless modes – thus providing a point of departure for ever-new spatial, temporal and contextual implementations.


Traces of Oblivion 1

This is the second part of a series of realisations of Ole Lutzow-Holm's composition Traces of Oblivion that I made with the laptop improviser Jakob Riis in 2012. 


Spår av glömska (Traces of Oblivion)  for 11-stringed alto guitar is the outcome of an extensive collaboration with Stefan Östersjö, who commissioned the piece, exploring a vast number of techniques and strategies founded on the particular timbral qualities of the instrument. In the end the piece itself came to consist of a selection of significant models, contours, gestures – partly as material for the written score, partly in the shape of pre-recorded sound files that may be played back and processed during the concert by a co-performer. These may then in turn be superimposed, looped and mixed, serving as the basis of a 4-8 channel sound installation modified for a suited venue, either complimentary to the live rendering or standing alone.
Through transient, winding or stationary passages and repetitive patterns Traces of Oblivion establishes its individual character by continually returning to images that seem connected to a sense of loss. One important aspect of the interpretation of the piece has been the concept of a malleable, wavering and uncompleted music whose formal residence is a sounding archive. The idea and purpose of the archive is that it be understood and performed in countless modes – thus providing a point of departure for ever-new spatial, temporal and contextual implementations.


Stefan Östersjö

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