Flaminis aura: Works by Tommie Haglund

This composer portrait opens with Tommie Haglund’s first score for full orchestra – the cello concerto Flaminis aura. Composed in 2001 and rewarded 13 years later with Sweden’s most important composition prize, the work is in a single movement with a slow basic pulse, and thus conforms to a recurring pattern within Haglund’s production. Its Latin title describes a state immediately prior to a religious revelation, and the music forms an exploration of both the human interior and the cosmos – towards the end of the work a tape with space sounds recorded by NASA is heard: a ‘Song of Earth’. 

Performed by Ernst Simon Glaser and the Gothenburg Symphony, the concerto is followed by another composition from 2001, the string quartet Il regno degli spiriti, and the string trio Sollievo (dopo la tempesta). Both these works are here performed by the highly regarded string trio ZilliacusPerssonRaitinen (ZPR), joined by Julia Kretz-Larsson on second violin in the quartet. Sollievo… was composed for ZPR in 2013, and its title – ‘relief after the storm’ – refers to the end of a period of painful treatment following a back operation. With a generous playing time of close to 84 minutes, the disc closes with Serenata per Diotima from 2014, interpreted by the strings of Malmö Symphony Orchestra with substantial violin solos from Håkan Rudner. Celebrating the female philosopher of Greek antiquity, the piece was also inspired by the birth of the composer’s first grandchild.