Into Eternity Lisa Larsson, Malmö Symphony Orchestra & Paul Mägi

• Rolf Martinsson (b. 1956): Opening Sounds, Op. 94:
• 1 Opening Sounds, Op. 94 06:21
• Ich denke Dein..., Op. 100:
• 2 Ich denke Dein..., Op. 100: No. 1, Nähe des Geliebten 05:25
• 3 Ich denke Dein..., Op. 100: No. 2, Liebes-Lied 05:06
• 4 Ich denke Dein..., Op. 100: No. 3, Blaue Hortensie 03:50
• 5 Ich denke Dein..., Op. 100: No. 4, Die Liebende schreibt 05:20
• 6 Ich denke Dein..., Op. 100: No. 5, Mondnacht 08:00
• Tour de force, Op. 95:
• 7 Tour de force, Op. 95 10:02
• Into Eternity, Op. 103:
• 8 Into Eternity, Op. 103 21:12
• Total Runtime 01:05:16

Info for Into Eternity

The music on Presentiment, a 2018 release with four orchestral works by Rolf Martinsson, was described by one critic as bold and uncompromisingly personal, eschewing avant-garde modernism and engaging us with solidly expert conventional techniques of composition and orchestration (MusicWeb International.com). The present disc features more of Martinssons music, performed by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra a body with which Martinsson has enjoyed a close relationship as its composer in residence. In two of the recorded works, the orchestra conducted by Paul Mägi is joined by another of Martinssons regular collaborators, the soprano Lisa Larsson. Larsson is the soloist in Ich denke Dein..., a song cycle setting five poems by Goethe, Rilke and von Eichendorff, and in Into Eternity, a longer work which in its second half incorporates two poems by the Swedish poet Karin Boye. Into Eternity was composed for the opening of the Malmö orchestra's new concert hall in 2015, and Martinsson wrote it, as well as Ich denke Dein..., with Lisa Larsson in mind. Larsson also appears on the composer's previous monograph on BIS, in his settings of poems by Emily Dickinson.

Lisa Larsson, soprano
Malmö Symphony Orchestra
Paul Mägi, conductor

Lisa Larsson
Swedish soprano Lisa Larsson started her career as a flautist (Master of Fine Arts) and studied singing in Basel. Her first engagement was at the Zurich Opera House, where she performed under a number of conductors including Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Franz Welser-Möst. Following her debut at La Scala in Milan in ›The Magic Flute‹ under Riccardo Muti, she swiftly developed her international opera career, in particular as a Mozart interpreter. She appeared at renowned European opera houses including the Bavarian State Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Royal Danish Opera, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the Leipzig Opera, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Royal Swedish Opera, the Theater Basel as well as at the Salzburg Festival, the Lucerne Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.

With the vocal flexibility to embrace a most diverse repertoire, Lisa Larsson is nowadays a versatile performer on the concert platform. In recent years she has enjoyed constantly expanding her repertoire with works by Mahler, Berg, Richard Strauss, Brahms, Berlioz, Britten, Stravinsky and has also performed in a number of world premieres of contemporary music.

Conductors she has worked with include Claudio Abbado, Sir Colin Davis, David Zinman, Leonard Slatkin, Daniel Harding, Adam Fischer, Louis Langrée, Antonello Manacorda, Vassily Sinaisky, Vasily Petrenko and Edo de Waart. Lisa Larsson has performed with leading orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic, the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestre National de Lyon, the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the New Japan Philharmonic, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra .

In the field of baroque music, she has often worked with leading conductors and their orchestras, including Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood, Frans Brüggen, Andrea Marcon, Emmanuelle Haïm, Ton Koopman, Nathalie Stutzmann, Nicholas McGegan, Paul Goodwin, Martin Haselböck, Gottfried von der Goltz, Trevor Pinnock, Richard Egarr, Fabio Bonizzoni, Jan Willem de Vriend and David Stern.

In the season 2018/2019 Lisa Larsson is very excited to present the new project “TRAUMREISE”, a concept by her on songs by Franz Berwald in orchestration by Rolf Martinsson. The work will have its world premiere with the Tonhalle-Orchestra Zürich under Lahiv Shani and will directly thereafter be performed by the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, where a “pre-taste” of the work also will be presented by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at their festive concert “A Tribute to Democracy”, in connection with the opening of the new Swedish government.

Also this season Lisa Larsson has a strong focus on works by Gustaf Mahler, with the soprano-solos of his 4th and 2nd symphonies respectively his Knabenwunderhorn Lieder in orchestral setting and by Rolf Martinsson, returning to orchestral as well as chamber-music repertoire he has composed for her. She will a.o also re-visit Alban Berg’s “Sieben frühe Lieder” and Alexander Zemlinsky’s “Walzergesänge” (in an orchestration for her by Martinsson) as well as the concert-scenes “Ah, perfido” by Beethoven and “Infelice” by Mendelssohn. Lisa Larsson is delighted over so many re-invitations from orchestras she has performed with before and is at the same time very much looking forward to making her debut with Orchestre National de Lille, France under Alexandre Bloch as well as the Vanemuise Sümfooniaorkestri, Estonia under Paul Mägi. With her passion for chamber-music she will present a project in Sweden with clarinet and piano, focused on repertoire by Mozart, Schubert and Spohr as well as a project in Spain with violin and piano focusing on Debussy, Hahn, Saint-Sans. Together with the string-quartet of the Malmö Symphony Orchestra she will present works by Respighi and Martinsson at Malmö Live concert-house and with excitement she will sing the part of the evangelist in Martinsson’s Lukas Passion both in a CD-recording (BIS) and in concerts.

In recent years Lisa Larsson has established a fruitful collaboration with Swedish composer Rolf Martinsson in co-commissions by now including more than 100 international performances, radio and TV broadcastings as well as CD-recordings together with conductors such as John Storgårds, Marc Albrecht, Gustavo Gimeno, Rumon Gamba and Stanislav Kochanovsky. The 2017 | 2018 season saw performances of Martinsson compositions dedicated to and performed by Lisa Larsson in Sweden, Austria, Spain and Australia. Together with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and Gordan Nikolic she recorded ›Garden of Devotion‹ and ›To the Shadow of a Reality‹ for CHALLENGE CLASSICS as well as ›Ich denke Dein ...‹ and ›Into Eternity‹ for BIS with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mägi.

Following her Mahler and Berlioz albums with Antonello Manacorda and a Haydn CD with Jan Willem de Vriend for Challenge Classics, Lisa’s newest release is featuring Rolf Martinsson’s ›Orchestral Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson‹, dedicated to her by the composer, with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrew Manze. Other highlights of her impressive discography include Strauss‘ ›Four Last Songs‹ under Douglas Boyd, Mahler’s 8th symphony under David Zinman, the Mozart operas ›Don Giovanni‹ under Daniel Harding, ›Mitridate‹ under Adam Fischer, ›Il sogno di Scipione‹ under Gottfried von der Goltz, Händel‘s ›Jephta‹ under David Stern. She has also recorded numerous Bach Cantatas under Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Ton Koopman. With the latter she also recorded Bach’s Christmas and Easter Oratorio as well as the Magnificat.

Booklet for Into Eternity