Programme notes:

Verkkommentar Engelsk Brief an Gösta Oswald consists of three texts. Both in Mädchentotenlieder and in Ein irrender Sohn, a dialogue unfolds, a soul feverishly, hypersensitively talking to itself - estranged by the alto flute´s crystalcold stream of sound as though refracted, mirrored in a spring of water that is constantly changing - trickling slowly, gushing forth anew, never still. In Mädchentotenlieder the melodic line flits hither and thither above the other instruments´dots and patches of sound. In Ein irrender Sohn the melodic pattern is more dynamic, taking more thickly woven with stretches of pure polyphony. As the character of the texts becomes steadily more agitated, from the morbid devotion of Mädchentotenlieder to the more virile energy of Ein irrender Sohn, and from the dramatic entry of Death in Und dei Zeiger seiner Augen wurden langsam zuruck gedreht to the oceanic disruption of the last few linesídentification with Ophelia, the accompanying music thrusts forward in equally ecstatic expansion. It is a brilliant realization of the new toneworld that developed towards the end of the fifties: large orchestra, a phonetically analytical declamatory chorus, loudspeakers and stereophony. At the same time the musical space alaso stretches backwords in time: echoes from the turn of the century intrude but are immediately thrown out: late Romantic impassioned brass and string peaks surge up in waves, only to be dashed into surf against the glittering coral reefs of the multifarious percussion. Entropy reduces the song to a recitative but towards the end, as in Madchentotenlieder, it swiches to an expression of self-annihilation - the undifferentiated chaos of a musical nuclear explosion. Séance, an instrumental coda extends the trilogy into a tetralogy. Text: Ilmar Laaban. From Phono Suecia nr 33 (1968)