The festival year 2013
For the media the year began in May with headings such as "death of festivals" when the rock/pop festival Peace & Love went bankrupt and the year ended when FKP Scorpio, after a half try in Sigtuna, closed the Hultsfred Festival. In this simplistic picture one would think that Sweden had only two festivals. Instead we let Dagens Nyheters Martin Nyström say something about growing festival landscape in Sweden; about a wonderful fresh start in Dalhalla Opera, a number of Chamber music festivals along the West Coast and lots of contemporary Swedish music at festivals.
A few excerpts from Martin Nystrom, Dagens Nyheter, many reviews about festivals in the past year.
About Opera at Läckö Castle A Midsummer night's dream: - In this "a Midsummer night's dream" are the borders to be displayed and then exceeded. And it is done with a fabulous energy, prodigal sensuality and with a lot of humor/.../Most, I would probably still remember the scene in the second act when lovers go into blackness and rage, then the consequence of the misunderstandings really are breathtaking. When the Midsummer night's dream in Shakespeare and in Britten... have reached so deeply that it seems bottomless.
About Benjamin Britten:-... perhaps the greatest compser to describe the alienations of the young and fragile/.../Brittens opera music, how desperate it may sound, always carry a conviction that links between us humans never completely brake/... /and whose 100th anniversary we celebrate this year the world over.
About Dalhalla Opera, that with Wagner's Das Rheingold made a comeback: - Marcus Jupithers (stage director) and Monika Fredins (set designer) staging of "Das Rheingold" in Dalhalla exploits and play with the environment in the Dalhalla quarry in a way not previously done/.../in a magical, but also highly comic "Das Rheingold" in which all on stage take a bath.
About Båstad Chamber Music Festival, the Kullabygden Music Festival and the Change Festival in Kungsbacka/Varberg: - The Styrsö Chamber Music Festival, however, is one in a long line of festivals that take place along the West Coast during summer. Festivals that present unusual and off combinations of music at the highest international level. As in Båstad, where the Festival this year revolved around the demanding but refined composer Klas Torstensson, and the venerable Kullabygden Music Festival that featured the star violinist Janine Jansen in a unique program in the Brunnby Church with her dad on harpsichord. This year, also saw festivals in Varberg and Kungsbacka become partners and form a festival on "Change" - with Malin Broman and Simon Crawford-Phillips as artistic directors.
About Vadstena-Akademien who commisioned the opera Jorun Orm i Öga for Vadstena Castle: - That Kerstin Ekman's crystalline and lyrically sensuous prose wanted to be sung can be heard in every syllable in Marie Samuelssons composition/.../but above all it is a composition that is a journey; from a fragmented, whimper, intimidated and wounded language to a music that towards the end really sing. A kind of wandering music that seems to take along everything in its path and who carry the promise of another and better world.
During the festival year 2013 a lot of contemporary Swedish music was performed. Together with STIM and the Association of Swedish composers the Association Swedish Music Festivals financially supported 8 concerts with contemporary Swedish music in 7 different festivals. A pilot project that is bound to continue in 2014.