For this year's concert final, we let fantastic music on the theme of exclusion fill the salon in a special program curated for HSO by pianist Francisca Skoogh.
The Renaissance has only begun for the cult composer Julius Eastman - who lived his life as black, gay and proud but would die destitute, homeless and forgotten. With his politically provocative titles, his minimalist music from the late 1970s and early 1980s has been a concept on the alternative stages. But despite the fact that he performed as a singer with the biggest classical name of the time, his music has rarely - if ever - been played in a Swedish concert hall.
Here Skoogh pairs Eastman with Tchaikovsky, another composer who lived both within the norm and outside it throughout his life. And so we play for the first time all five movements of "Earth Voices", our commissioned work by the composer Colin Riley who framed this season.
And maybe, maybe it's now time to punch a hole in the art music bubble we ourselves have been with and created for so long. To open the doors to another possible world, out there. Standing there waiting, like a treasure chest overflowing.
Program
Julius Eastman: Evil Nigger
Colin Riley: Earth Voices In
Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1
Participating
Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra
Soloist: Francisca Skoogh, piano
Conductor: Fredrik Burstedt