SKU: HL.287423

Wald for Ensemble was composed by Hans Abrahamsen in 2008-09. Co-commission by the Schonberg Ensemble and BBC for Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Programme Note Wald is, in a way, a series of variations from the beginning of my woodwind quintet Walden (1978). This thematical idea is very simple - a rising call of a fourth and the response in other voices. This idea is repeated several times, but because the call has aslower pulse than the responses, the process leads to them changing order. In Walden I borrowed the title from the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who, in the middle of the eighteenth century, in alittle wooden hermit house at the bank of the lake Walden pond, wrote the book Walden of his life and time in the forests. Here he experimented living for two years in order to come closer to nature and to see if it was possible to live simply without all the unnecessary needs created by society. The book is filled with poetry, but is also cutting and critical of society. In my piece Walden, I tried to search for the same simplicity, handling the most simple material, but at the same time trying not to lose the poetry. Wald is a twin piece to Walden, but also to my former piece Schnee. Robert Schumann wrote in 1848-49 a wonderful piano piece, Waldszenen. He wrote this collection of short pieces with beautiful titles.