Magnus Granberg: The Willow Bends And So Do I; Holde Träume, Kehret Wieder! [Another Timbre]. The two most recent Granberg releases on Another Timbre give you both the truth and the lie behind the observation of “always different; always the same”. When Holde Träume, Kehret Wieder! came out last year I lost track of it in the shuffle of events at the time, then was spurred to recover it when The Willow Bends And So Do I cam out. Can I tell them apart? At least as well as I know my Bach(s). Would it matter? No. I needed a better context, so I listened to these in succession variously with some of his older works, such as 2012’s Despairs Had Governed Me Too Long and 2013’s Would Fall from the Sky, Would Wither and Die. Granberg’s compositions typically play out over 45 to 60 minutes, so they don’t lend themselves readily to comparison testing. From this perspective, Despairs sounds more withdrawn and furtive than before, Fall testing how far it can act out without risking the overall form. Over the years, Granberg and the core group of musicians he has worked with have developed a clarity of purpose in playing these works, still highly sensitive to the delicate environment each piece creates, while being confident enough to speak out when needed.
Holde Träume, Kehret Wieder! was composed in 2021 and is presented here in two versions, a septet performed by Skogen and a version played by the quartet Nattens Inbrott. Both were recorded in the same studio in Stockholm in November that year; both ensembles include Granberg himself and percussionist Erik Carlsson. Granberg’s signature prepared piano, common to almost all the recordings of his music I’ve heard so far, plays a slow and fairly steady succession of isolated sounds which act as vertebrae around which each piece is built. He draws upon other music for his material, ranging from old pop songs to Schubert, but any direct reference is sublimated through slowness and by pooling resources between the musicians who often play on the threshold between pitch and non-pitch. Sounds are shared and exchanged through a loose but organised dialogue (I’m still think about Guðmundur Steinn Gunnarsson here). I’m going to venture that the flavour of each piece comes from the rarefied sentimentality captured in the source material, even as its appearance has been transcended. Holde Träume focuses on stillness and texture, falling into sections defined by the amount of surface activity. The quartet version is all acoustic; the septet adds the electroacoustic elements of amplified objects, friction. The septet take is still transparent, not much less empty, but with an expanded range of low sounds and faint noise. The Willow Bends And So Do I was composed in 2024, with Skogen appearing here as a nonet with some new members. Melody, in its own strange way, is present throughout and the piece progresses through its sixty minutes in a continous form, with changes across the piece made by periodic alterations to melodic patterns and shifting roles for timbre with each instrument. Musicians exchange foreground and background roles, producing an intricate counterpoint. The dynamics are gentle but firm throughout, without any semblance of reticence. It captures the experience I recall of hearing them play live. Speaking of which, I may even leave the house to hear Skogen again this weekend, a 13-piece band playing Granberg’s 2023 piece Trouble, Had it All My Days.
[…] Nakamura on his no-input mixing board adding to the colour and texture. After just going through some of his other recent compositions it was a pleasure to hear this work live, there being no recording available yet. Apart from the […]