Beatnik is an orchestral version of the short and intensive piece Sputnik for piccolo trumpet and orchestra, written for Håkan Hardenberger and the inauguration of the concert hall Malmö Live in 2015. Both titles are redolent of the 1960s and while Sputnik has a musical connection via the piccolo trumpet part that soars off to great heights, specially designed for Håkan Hardenberger’s virtuosic capacity, the other title alludes to music’s rhythmic activity, with odd and varied time signatures. It is a fast and virtuoso piece, almost – as the composer himself says – “like a mini-concerto for conductor and orchestra”.

The earliest piece on the record, Crimson Seas for contralto and orchestra, was composed already in 2007 during Tobias Broström’s period as composer-in-residence with the Gävle Symphony Orchestra, and is a setting of Gustaf Fröding’s poem “Atlantis”, in an English translation by C.D. Locock. The work was composed for the Royal Court Singer Anna Larsson, and is the only piece composed during Broström’s residency in Gävle that has not been recorded until now.

Stellar Skies for flute and string orchestra is a tranquil and lyrical piece, and even though the solo part has virtuoso features it is of another type than those one finds in Broström’s larger concertos. As usual, Broström did not write a work for a solo instrument in general, but for a special musician, in this case the flutist Malin Nordlöf. “Collaborating with Malin was a new experience”, says Broström. “I knew her as an orchestral musician, we hadn’t worked together before, but it turned out to be fun and stimulating” and they began, he says, a rewarding creative process in the working-out of the solo part. While a number of Broström’s works build on clear-cut rhythms, we encounter in Stellar Skies more fluid, almost intangible structures. As in Crimson Seas harmony and sound constitute a central point of departure where the string orchestra creates a shimmering background with trills, tremolos and figurations, against which the livelier phrases and the free declamation in the solo part are outlined.