There is something about a violin being caressed that has always attracted me even though I know it can be a very difficult instrument to learn and play. How can you play something that has a fret board without any frets? It’s like having a piano where all the keys are black and flat.
Perhaps it is because I hark back to my days in the airline and tourism business when the airline I worked for hosted an evening event in Vienna which involved a string quartet playing classical pieces quietly in the background.
To a northern working class lad it was the very height of sophistication and could have been taken straight out of Ultravox’s video for ‘Vienna’ or the New Year’s Day Concert from that fine city.
(Incidentally, when I asked them if they “knew any ABBA” they actually did and played ‘Dancing Queen’ then rocked out until well after bedtime).
Then, the following night I was back in the UK, in the Cloggers Arms, drinking pints of bitter and playing darts.
I had a similar difficulty with Hanna Ekström’s ‘Reflections for solo violin’, three separate three-minute singles, as I did with Øystein Skar’s live recorded piano extravaganza a few weeks ago. What can you say about solo violin pieces with no lyrics so there is no story attached to them? And especially when they carry the title ‘Reflections’? On what?
But as it turns out that doesn’t really matter because Hanna says “It is rare that you get the opportunity and take the time to make music that in no way needs to relate to others, but I have done it now, so here are three pieces for solo violin.”
So my advice to you would be simply to chill out and appreciate the dexterity, the power, the tenderness, the tension, the feeling and the vibrato.
They’re all here. Give it some reflection.
They do seem to be telling their own story, like an 18th or 19th century novel coming to life, or a play in three acts. I don’t know what that story is yet, but I’m working on it.
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