Ingvar Lidholm (1921–2017) was a central figure in Swedish musical life, ever since his debut in the 1940s. He belonged to the well-known Monday Group, he was the chief conductor in Örebro, director of chamber music at the Swedish Radio Radio and worked for 10 years as a professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He began as a light romantic and grew into a noble expressionist, with deep roots in tradition. He sought the unique in each new work. His music is performed today by choirs and orchestras worldwide.
Ingvar Lidholm studied at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm during World War II . From the circle of students around Hilding Rosenberg, the so-called Monday Group was formed, which in many ways contributed to the modernization of Swedish musical life during the following half century. The young Swedes went out into the world to meet the new currents of the times. Together with conductor Herbert Blomstedt, Lidholm was the first Swede in Darmstadt, he went with Blomdahl to Italy and studied twelve-tone technique with Matyas Seiber in London. Elements from decades of style development – from Hindemith to Ligeti and Lutoslawski – permeated and colored Lidholm's music.
Ingvar Lidholm had a unique, sensual feeling for the singing voice. He collaborated for sixty years with the legendary choir conductor Eric Ericson. They met in their youth in Stockholm in 1943, at the birth of the Chamber Choir. In 1947 the 26-year-old Lidholm confronted the Chamber Choir with the greatest challenge a Swedish choir had hitherto encountered: his first choral work Laudi. Latin texts from the Bible were formulated in a musical language that brought together Palestrina and Stravinsky of the Symphony of Psalms. In the series of Lidholm´s large-scale choral works – from Laudi to Canto LXXXI, a riveder le stelle, Libera me and Greek Grave Relief – seminal ideas are articulated that hark back to earlier ages of our cultural heritage.
In the same way, Ingvar Lidholm's orchestral works form a backbone of Swedish music, from the 23-year-old's acclaimed debut work Toccata e Canto1945 to the masterpieces Ritornell, Motus-Colores, Poesis, Greetings, Kontakionon and the ballet Rites, which renewed music's construction technique, color, form and expressiveness. He was particularly pleased with Herbert Blomstedt's interpretations of his orchestral works.
Lidholm's operatic work – mainly the opera A Dream Play and the TV opera The Dutchman – was devoted to August Strindberg, whose texts were also set to music in songs and choral works. A Dream Play was staged in Stockholm in 1992 and later by several opera houses abroad, such as Sante Fé, USA and Weimar, Germany.
Göran Bergendal 2017
(Photo: Ulla Lidholm)
