FLAMINIS AURA

The cello concerto Flaminis Aura is music which “moves forward with a continual melodic presence”. This quote is from the jury’s motivation for the Christ Johnson Prize which Tommie Haglund achieved in 2014. Flaminis Aura was composed as early as 2002 during a particularly painful and threatening period of severe illness. The title refers to a Latin expression for a Christian ritual condition just before a religious revelation. The music explores both our innermost emotions and the vastness of the cosmos – indeed toward the end of the concerto the soloist performs with recorded space sounds from NASA.

Students from the film department of Sturegymnasiet documented the Tommie Haglund Festival 2018. This through an OB production of two concerts. This is part 2, Flaminis Aura. It was filmed at St. Nikolai Church in Halmstad in October 2018.

THE SYMPHONY

QUIET OASIS AND APPROACHING STORMS

Tommie Haglund´s first symphony is a broad and deep composition of epic character.

In one long movement, sculptured in a wide, impressive arc, it is with its over 50 minutes a unique composition. Very few composers both historically and contemporary master that very difficult art in holding an uninterrupted tension through one movement of these dimensions.

A symphony of today is a rarity, as Gustav Mahler put it, “A symphony must be like the world, it must contain everything”: nature, mankind, purgatory and heaven. All this is for the listener to experience during the journey through Tommie Haglund’s first symphony. The music is direct and striking, not intellectualized or hard to understand.

The revised version, which will be premiered at the festival, is even richer in colour, more deeply sensual, taking us down a winding path through a kaleidoscope of emotional storms, quiet oasis and approaching tempests. It is simply a mirror of life, just like Mahler urged.

In order to put the symphony in a historical context we must return to the late romantic composers, like Mahler, Bruckner and even Wagner. An era where the magnificent, both in time, beauty of sound and a more uninhibited way of expression was allowed. This era is revived through Tommie Haglund’s first symphony.

Joachim Gustafsson, artistic director at the Tommie Haglund Festival