Mats Persson & Kristine Scholz
Stilla Sväva

Released Oktober 28, 2022

About the album

stilla sväva presents Swedish veteran new-music pianists Mats Persson (b. 1943) and Kristine Scholz (b. 1944) performing two intimate and personal pieces by the Swedish kacapi musician and composer Kristofer Svensson (b.1990, kristofersvensson.com) on early 19th century instruments tuned in just intonation. 

I Sommarluft, performed by Persson on a Swedish Lindholm-Söderström clavichord from 1809, is described by Svensson as a musical self-portrait in six movements. With direct quotations and variations, the composer reflects on their musical training and brings into a unified poetic vision different musical traditions such as Japanese mi-kagura, European Renaissance music, Sundanese tarawangsa, and the music of Svensson’s teacher Fujieda Mamoru. Read the full program note to I Sommarluft here.

On Kori Kamandungan, performed on a square piano built by Pehr Rosenwall  in the 1840s, Scholz plays an elaborate part of twenty different harmonics—something that is made possible by the horizontal layout of the strings—while Persson leisurely moves through simple chordal and melodic phrases in a justly tuned 5-limit pitch space. The combination of brittle harmonics, soft dynamics, and the exploitation of the fast-beating Pythagorean harmonies found within the 5-limit tuning creates a gentle atmosphere of aurorean shimmering.

About the performers

Kristine Scholz & Mats Persson have been playing together as a duo for over fifty years after first meeting in Cologne in 1969 as students of Aloys Kontarsky. Their focus is on new and avant-garde music, and they have premiered works written directly for them by composers such as Aldo Clementi, Friedhelm Döhl, Dror Feiler, Johannes Fritsch, Erhard Grosskopf, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Luca Lombardi, Chris Newman, Christian Wolff, and Zoltán Jeney. The duo pioneered the works of John Cage, Erik Satie, and the Russian avant-garde, and brought wider attention to unique composers such as Ivan Wyschnegradsky, J.M. Hauer, and Claude Loyola Allgén by performing their works before they became widely known. Over their fifty-year performance history, they have brought their performances of this music to the major festivals and stages around the world.

Kristine Scholz was born in Wüstebrise, Schlesien (DE). She studied the piano and chamber music in Hamburg (1964-68) and Cologne (1969-72). Her teachers included Eckart Besch, Konrad Richter, Wilhelm Hecker and Aloys Kontarsky.

Mats Persson was born in Sandviken (SE). He studied the piano for Greta Erikson and contemporary ensemble playing for Siegfried Naumann at The Royal College of Music in Stockholm (1964-69), and the piano for Aloys Kontarsky at the Cologne Academy of Music between 1969-72.

Tracklist:

[1-6: I Sommarluft]

1. I. Ko kyoku 
05:45
2. II. Nageire (after Fujieda & Frey) 
03:23
3. III. In Nomine (after Taverner)
05:37
4. IV. Azumagoto (trad. Japanese)
01:52
5. V. Quodlibet (after Fujieda & trad. Sundanese)
06:17
6. VI. I Sommarluft
06:35

7. Kori Kamandungan
13:50

Credits:

Compositions by Kristofer Svensson.
Instrument technician & tuner: HansErik Svensson.
Mixed and mastered by Mike Tierney at Shiny Things Studio, Brooklyn.
Recorded at Tavastgatan, Stockholm in March 2019 by Leo Hermodsson. 
Artwork: detail from flowers of the four seasons (1815) after Sakai Hōitsu in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.