Programme notes:

The instrumental Drei Szenen recapitulates and finalizes the development of the previous few years. At the same time it gives an intimation of the next stage in Bo Nilsson´s development: simplified expressive means, the primary importance of emotion, the post-modern stylistic collage. The opening flute solo i Szene 1 is an instrumental counterpart to the vocal line in the beginning of the Oswald trilogy - the same melodic fluctuations zigzagging intermittently. In the accompaniment the same gamelan sound combinations as in Stunde eines Blocks crop up again, now with an additional battery of empty bottles. The musical dictions stems from the late Darmstadt period: constantly brittle and finely sensitive but no longer bound by strict serial calculations. Without any warning, in the middle of the labyrinthian perplexities of the score, the most laconic form of musical simplification appears - a repeat sign, producing an effect approaching a musical Rorschach ink blot. A purely scenic device brings the piece to an end: eight strokes ring out from the tamtams and bass piano keys. Such is Szene 1 - a prelude, a preparation. In Szene 2 the sounds that are created by the greatly amplified orchestra are almost entirely located in the descant register - a "Darmstadt" sound that Bo Nilsson transforms into his own personal, hypersensitive expressive means, simultaneously delicate and aggressive. And while the body of sound expands, the silences with varpets of flickering sound in an increasingly aphoristic process, a solo piano taking over the role played by the flute in Szene 1. Once again, echoing through fluttering trills, three strokes of the tamtam bring the scene to an and. Szene 2 - ceaseless expectation, mounting suspence. In Szene 3 with its more "normaly" balanced body of sound, the cell tissues are more cohesive, while the music progresses in leaps from one static sonority to another: signals, moments of silence, dance steps, short stretches of general improvisation, eruptive outbursts of emotion. After a slowly swelling tremolo for two gongongs - maximal "scenic" effect! - the orchestra explodes in an exactly two-minute-long reiteration of the nuclear fission that ends the third part of the Gösta Oswald trilogy - this time in fusion form. So ends the youthful Bo Nilsson´s first irrepressibly adventurous stage of productivity. Text: Ilmar Laaban. From Phono Suecia nr 33 (1968)