"Tobias is a percussionist from the start, has a background in rock music and it shows. In the first movement it bounces and swings in energetic repetitions. The feeling is rising, refreshing and busy hypnotic, a little big city à la Gerschwin, a little Stravinsky, sure, and Ravel Towards the end, a bluesy evening mood that leads on into the impressionistic dreamy shimmer of the second movement.
It is like falling into a dream, through clouds, veils, here there is melancholy as in Satie, sonorous beauty as in Debussy.
Then the energetic metropolitan rhythm returns in the last movement, physical, restless and life-giving. Here, too, a floating, fresh feeling, like sailing in higher layers of air. The title gives a hint of the time before the First World War and certainly we are partly taken there, musically. This attractive and accessible music has every chance of becoming a new classic, loved by many."
Camilla Dal, Gävle Dagblad Sound samples:
Per Tengstrand, piano
Gävle Symphony Orchestra, cond. Johannes Gustavsson
SWEDISH SOCIETY SSACD 1145
