Lo Kristenson Förnimmelser

The Swedish word förnimmelser translates to mean both sensations and perceptions. In the context of the
album, it signifies the perception of other beings. Alongside Rakel Emhjellen Paulsen (alto flute), Julija Morgan
(baroque violin) and Tove Bagge (baroque viola), Kristenson refines her sound over a series of “collective
exercises, conversation and experiments,” designed to help the ensemble unlearn their rehearsed musical
gestures together. The process was explicitly developed by Kristenson to challenge the bodily and musical
expectations associated with playing instruments in a traditional manner. To achieve this, it was essential
for each musician to focus intensely on the listening process and maintain an awareness of their own body,
harnessing naturally occurring friction and resistance to create dynamic waves of musical energy while
playing.
The score was provided in fragments, giving the players the option to choose between notated phrases and
more freeform directions. Tempo wasn’t specified, but an approximate duration was offered for guidance,
in the hope that whatever timing would emerge would come from intuition rather than design. Kristensen
encouraged each player to think about their breathing patterns, and let that guide their performance. And
that’s starkly visible on the album’s 20-minute opener ‘I’, where oddly pitched string phrases graze each other
softly, strangled to silence periodically to emphasise negative space. Paulsen’s ascendent flute tones melt
into the strings, and the music appears to balance precariously between folk-y tenderness and sounds more
regularly associated with experimental classical minimalism.
Kristensen intersperses these longer, core pieces with shorter, more abstracted compositions titled
‘mellanrum’, meaning the space in-between. These interludes add an important pause for breath, rupturing
the silence with scant, virtuosic gestures. ‘III’ is almost funereal in tone, but the humanity of each vibrating
string gives it a level of uniqueness that’s hard to turn away from. Sustained tones waver and warble
like strained voices, and tones seem to oscillate against each other, either forming subtle harmonies or
languishing in phased dissonance.
Förnimmelser is confident, mettlesome music that asks the listener to reconsider the character of each
instrument, but also that of the players and composer. Deep listening not only recommended, but fully
rewards