Another great 5 stars review in Fanfare
January 20, 2025
Raymond Tuttle
Download BYSTRÖM Ink-Wash on Paper. By the Window Malin Broman (vn/va); Eriikka Nylund (va); Marie Macleod (vc); Rick Stotijn (db); Niklas Andersson (cl); Henrik Blixt (bn); Chris Parkes (hn); Simon Crawford-Phillips (pn/cel) OUR 9.70870 (40:30)
Swedish composer Britta Byström (b. 1977) began her career as a musician playing the trumpet. She started composing when she was a teenager. She has written music that was commissioned by the BBC Proms (Parallel Universes) and a violin concerto for Janine Jansen. She has not appeared in Fanfare since 2008, when her work Förvillelser (“Delusions”) was included in a program on BIS by Christian Lindberg and the Nordic Chamber Orchestra. Colin Clarke called it “an approachable, well-constructed, and imaginative piece,” and the disc appeared on his Fanfare Want List at the end of that year.
As the title suggests, this is music inspired by visual art. (This release's subtitle is “A piece inspired by seven paintings by Gunnel Wåhlstrand for eight musicians.”) In 2017, Byström and violinist Malin Broman attended an exhibition in Stockholm where Wåhlstrand's works were on display. The three women soon agreed to “do something together,” and it eventually was decided that Wåhlstrand's paintings would be projected on a screen while Byström's music played. The paintings, which are in a photorealistic style, are reproduced in OUR Recordings's booklet, although one needs to see Wåhlstrand's work in person to appreciate it fully. (Fortunately, recordings are kinder to music than most reproductions are to paintings.)
I was impressed with this music and enjoyed listening to it repeatedly over the course of a single winter afternoon. Perhaps Byström has not captured the uncapturable, but she has given us a good idea of how it sounds, smells, feels, and tastes. Saints be praised, she has not tried to engage in musical mimicry—there is no lapping water in “Shallow Waters,” which is the sixth movement, and there is no Mussorgsky-like promenading in the second (“Looking at Paintings”). The music is not tuneful in the way that a pop song is, but in spite of being unarguably modern, it engages the listener with its shimmering and sometimes unexpected (a slide whistle, a celesta, etc.) colors. It also gives the listener the idea that even if the composer chooses not to write “tunes,” she does not fail to give listeners something, even if it is just a few signal notes, to latch onto and follow as the music moves forward. Each of the seven short pieces (between 2:39 and 5:28 in length) has its own character. They are as different as the seven paintings that inspired them, and they are all as worthy of close study. That said, if I had to apply a painting technique to Byström's music, instead of photorealism, I would nominate 21st-century impressionism. (If no such thing exists, I have just invented it.) If Ravel were to come back to life and take a crash course in the musical developments that transpired in the century since his death, he might end up writing music that sounds like Britta Byström's. She is a master painter and colorist—not with a brush but with instruments.
By the Window, which is a separate work, is similarly painterly, although the canvas is larger, because its timing is 12:04. It also is inspired by one of Gunnel Wåhlstrand's paintings. This time I am going to let the composer speak for herself:
"By the Window"...depicts two young people at a sunlit window, deeply engrossed in leafing through a book. Or is it possibly a photo album - perhaps the very album from which Gunnel much later painted this picture?
My aim has not been to illustrate the painting in music, but I have tried to bring to life the moment itself: the immersion of the two people, the almost blinding light from the window, a sense of both melancholy and peace.
"By the Window" is one of Gunnel Wåhlstrand's paintings that contains the most white, that is, that lets the white paper shine through. This pristine white is matched in my composition by the piano's reverberation – the pristine timbre – and to enhance the contrast between light and dark, I have prepared the piano's mid-range with damping rubber. Against this we then hear two singing string instruments, often in very high registers and often revolving around the same note. The title "By the Window" has another meaning for me, namely something that the composer Steve Reich has said: "Music should be like an open window". By that he means that the composer must be open to impulses from the outside world: the music being played the street outside the window should be able to find its way into the score. Here, my window has been open to the visual arts.
The composer's use of a prepared piano broadens the sonic palette of this specific work, compared to Ink-Wash on Paper, even though fewer instruments are employed. However, the piano is not turned into a percussion ensemble, in the manner of John Cage. More subtle coloristic effects are created instead.
Hearing these performances, one readily appreciates how keenly the musicians have entered into Byström's sound-world and listened to each other. Artistically and mechanically, these probably are definitive performances, and they have been recorded beautifully as well. (The accompanying materials also laud the work of Tonmeister Jens Ulrich Braun.)
This release has made me want to hear more of this composer's work, and I have already taken steps to do so. Raymond Tuttle
5 stars: Britta Byström composes painterly music with self-discipline, and with a fine sense of color.