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  • 42 PIECES For Piano

    Take a look and enjoy!

    42 PIECES For Piano - No. 24 - Fredrik Hagstedt

    Performance by Bengt Forsberg

  • 42 PIECES For Piano - No. 6 - Fredrik Hagstedt

    Performance by Bengt Forsberg

    Interview with pianist Bengt Forsberg

    Topic: 42 PIECES For Piano by Fredrik Hagstedt

  • The music should recreate the joys and pains of living

     

    I aim for giving each composition of chamber music a personal identity where the thematic ideas are explored as thoroughly as possible.

     

    I want to make it an in-depth musical study, made possible by the fact that I choose not to include every possible idea or association.

     

    This provides for an opportunity to really refine the piece's character; to bring out its particularity.

     

     

    To streamline an idea.

     

    I work in many different vocal formats, where the center of gravity is a really empathic interpretation of the text. The composition process is actually about exploring the text - by composing it.

     

     

    To interpret with empathy.

     

    My work with symphonic composition is a process where composition sessions are quite spread out over time. In this way I can continue on an old idea that has been left behind, making the composition mature naturally over time.

     

    The ambition is that the symphonic music should be both complex and contain a rich flora of different aspects of existence; musical as well as human.

     

     

    To work circularly and go back again and again.

    To ask the question: how finished is the music?

    To not give up until the music is good enough.

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    CHAMBER MUSIC

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    Catalogue Works, extensive chamber works

    Sinfonia per due violini

    Sinfonia per due violini is based upon a film script by Johannes Nyholm. Hagstedt hopes that this film will some day be realised, and that parts of Sinfonia will be used as the score. The film deals with grandiose visions and unattainable dreams. Where desire itself is depicted as a thing of magnificent beauty, and at the same time absurd and crazy. Like life itself. Sinfonia portrays all of this in four parts.

     

    The work is written for Duo Gelland, and is recorded by them on NOSAG records together with Depurazione.

     

    Link to a review in The Gramophone.

    42 pieces for piano

    42 pieces for piano is a collection of a wide spectrum of emotions, or rather musical reflections upon emotions. There is no titles, just numbers on the pieces. Most of the work was composed during 2017, and it was finished in early 2018.

    Depurazione

    Music by Fredrik Hagstedt performed by Duo Gelland. Dance and choreography by Eva Ingemarsson.

    Suite no. 1 for DO-organ

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    VOCAL MUSIC

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    Works for choir, works for solo singers

    Evighet for mixed choir

    Evighet (Eternity) is Hagstedt's so far biggest work of vocal music. It contains of both a set of songs for Mixed Choir, and a set of songs for Solo Voice (Mezzo-Soprano) and Violin Duo. Lyrics for the songs are written by different Swedish (mostly) authors, some of them as a response to a direct question from the composer. The main themes are life, death, time, and eternity.

     

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    SYMPHONIC MUSIC

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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    Orchestral Works, Music inspired by Nature Photography, Symphonies

    Sad Music

    This is not a Symphony, but a work for orchestra, with a somewhat symphonic sounding. Hagstedt's own words about the work: "The idea came to on a hike in a really foggy and grey forest in November, 2018. It was in the morning, the darkness had just left, and I felt very calm and sad in a both comforting and relieving way. I thought, more people need to get in touch with nature in this way, get away from the digital pseudo-reality once in a while. And I felt that I wanted to create a piece of music that could move people, immediately, make them feel something similar to what I felt in that moment, and maybe inspire them to disconnect to the web and social media, and connect to real life – and feel deeper emotions, both pure sadness and great happiness."

    Dalafjällen

    Music inspired by Nature Photography. Photos by Claes Grundsten.

     

    Grundsten and Hagstedt have a collaboration since 2017, which so far has resulted in orchestral works, and works for piano and works for organ.

     

    In every work they select a theme, and inspired by Grundsten's chosen photos, Hagstedt composes music that tries to create emotions similar to what the pictures communicate. The goal is that the photos and the music combined shall make an even greater impact.

    Symphony no 2

    This work is about rhythm more than anything else. Rhythmic force, and details, and developement, and different metres. Additive metres such as 7/8, 8/8 (3+3+2), 11/8 (3+3+3+2), among others, and sometimes mixed metres.

     

    It contains both joyful and painful rhythms, and also a lot of memorable tunes and themes. By listening to the work in its entirety, most people would possibly become more curious about the world, and happy to be alive.
     

    To Hagstedt this was a difficult Symphony to create, as he had begun it 2007, but then left the work unfinished with just one completed movement and some sketches for the rest. To take up the process again in 2017 was in some ways painful. It was like evoking ten-year old emotions, and have to deal with them again. In the end this however made the work stronger.

    Symphony no 6

    Lasting around 28 minutes, this is a quite short Symphony. Maybe there will be another movement added later, as Hagstedt intended from the beginning, but for now it is completed as a single movement work. It is written for a small orchestra, with a Piano part that is to be considered as a solo part, but far from making it a concerto. The main idea for the work is to reflect impressions from the nature, especially the forest in the spring, with a lot of living creatures both audially and visually present. But it is not so much echoing their sounds, it is more of recreating the feeling to be walking in this landscape. The very beginning, however, and some other sections, is more about looking out from a view point, far out, on both the forest, and the distant sea.
    In the work there are some quotations from his own choir pieces Evighet, melodies which works fine sung by instruments as well as by singers.

    Rapadalen

    Music inspired by Nature Photography. Photos by Claes Grundsten.

    Symphony no 3

    Symphony no 3, composed between 2016-2017.

    Symphony no 4

    Hagstedt's fourth symphony took four years to complete.

    Symphony no 5

    Symphony no 5 is a still going work-in-progress, probably finished by the autumn of 2020.

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    WORKSHOP WITH DUO GELLAND

     

     

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    The meaningful

     

    My vantage point in relation to meaningfulness is existential and revolves around the perception of doing something developing; in doing nothing on routine.


    The composition process, ideally, should face me with difficult challenges.

     

    It's a life task really; a purification process.

     

    An important part of this is regular long hikes in the forest, by the sea and in the mountains. Then I listen to silence, to myself, and to my future compositions.

     

     

    To call and be responded.

     

     

     

     

     

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    CONTACT