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Three poems from Idyll and Epigram

Arranged by Carl Unander-Scharin

Stenhammar, Wilhelm

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In the pandemic spring of 2020, I set out to improve my piano playing, and therefore carefully fingered some songs by Wilhelm Stenhammar - songs that I like and which often return to the repertoire for both myself and my singing students. At Möja, where we lived during this desolate spring, we have an old piano which, according to legend, was played by Jean Sibelius many years ago. I devoted myself to tuning and adjusting this old piano, alternately practicing and fingering the songs. During these strange months, Stenhammar's exuberant and at the same time sad music often rang out from my little music house over the outcrops and heather bushes - and became for me something of a vignette for the joy of life and the courage to live that must be held on to despite a trying time of many different ways.
Towards the end of the year, an unexpected request came from Sveriges Radio och Radiokören if I would like to process or in some way re-compose a song by Stenhammar in particular - because the year 2021 is an anniversary year. Of course I wanted this - and I had these songs fresh in the ear and in the fingers. I started just before Christmas and immediately realized that I wanted to put together three of the songs I had been playing so much into a coherent flow. If you want, you can see the course as a tragedy unfolding against an idyllic fund. All poems come from Runeberg's "Idyll and Epigram" - but from two different song cycles by Stenhammar.
I dedicate this work of mine to the memory of Wilhelm Stenhammar and have done it with the wonderful Radio Choir and guest conductor Erik Westberg - my old student friend and friend - in mind. The arrangements were commissioned by Sweden's Radio Berwaldhallen and Radiokören. Carl Unander-Scharin Möja and Stockholm January 2021