There are no more four seasons #
There are no more four seasons is the name of a duo comprised of the electronic musician Mattias Petersson and classical violinist George Kentros. Founded in 2003, they take older pieces of music and recompose them in order to once again become relevant to our times. They are also quite the live band, playing everything from rock festivals to concert halls, as well as conducting workshops for conservatories and musically inclined youths.
Their self-titled debut CD was based on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and named one of the ten best classical recordings of the ’00s by Sweden’s biggest daily paper Dagens Nyheter, and Time Out New York called them a must see concert, writing that ”the result fits together more perfectly than any Ikea bookshelf”.
The self-titled debut album #
Where exactly does an interpretation go over the boundary of becoming a new piece? And what is the border between the work of two composers from two different time periods? These were the questions we asked ourselves when we began the project that later took on the title ”there are no more four seasons” – an attempt to reconstruct a series of older pieces by Vivaldi and give them an organic place in the music of our times.
There is perhaps no other work that has become such a lingua franca, at least within the Western art music world, as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. In fact, we suspect that the work is so overexposed that it is almost impossible for a modern audience to separate their experience of the work from a tradition of what the work is supposed to mean and their constant association with the piece in films, elevators, and light radio. With this project, we attempt to reinvent the entire Four Seasons in such a way that it can be listened to as if it were written today and the audience experienced the piece for the first time. This was done in two major steps: first, the score in its entirety was sampled, with one violin recording all the parts. This was used by Mattias Petersson as the basic sound material. Then, when the background music was complete, George Kentros adapted his playing and the solo violin part to follow the new electronic backgrounds; this was accomplished partly through the use of certain extended techniques and partly by allowing Mattias to put the violin part through a Kaoss Pad and different computer patches during performances.
Some Press Quotes #
The most important elements of the original are still there. Like the roller coaster-like ride of the circulating chord progressions, in the accelerations and the sudden stops—that hit the listener like a train running off the rails. Along with the seductively mocking, carnival feel of the sonic glitter. But it’s done with new sounds, harder beats, and a wholly new feeling of risk. And it is superb listening.
Martin Nyström, Dagens Nyheter
Without a doubt my album of the year… I don’t have the words to capture Petersson’s sound treatment—it is so rich in innovation, so free within the technological breaks where so many other laptop artists get stuck halfway… And then George Kentros’ sensitive, expressive violin playing that is drawn in, tumbled around, flies out in echoing, vibrating space to form icy, rocky, riven soundscapes. There Are No More Four Seasons is a monumental CD. Vivaldi would put in his earplugs and give it a big fat thumbs up.
Sven Rånlund, Sound of Music
Beats attack, bounce like ping pong balls, melodic fragments land in chaos or create corrosive bubbles. Kentros’ expressive playing style is triumphant, it can be lyrical, but is often violent, hard, with raw energy and a direct feeling.
PM Jönsson, Sonic Magazine
Kick-ass Vivaldi
Stefan Westrin, Arbetarbladet
This affects you. It’s Vivaldi as you’ve never heard him before. If you are not afraid of a little electronica and dare open your ears and preferences wide, then this is something to sink your teeth into… Mattias Petersson opens his magical soundbox and entices us with all his musical creativity until I am totally sold.
Michael Bruze, Norrköpings tidningar
Since the debut, we have made new pieces based on H.I.F. von Biber’s Passacaglia for solo violin (reBiber, 2013), Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (unRaveled, 2023), Johann Strauss II’s An der Schönen Blauen Donau (Kentros & Petersson, 2024), and various other projects.
reBiber #
For our second full-length album, we used H.I.F. von Biber’s Passacaglia for solo violin from 1676. Here, the eternal repetitive form of the original has been their point of departure, but during the process, phrases have been added and taken away, and all has passed through both digital and analog algorithms, among other ways in the form of a modular synthesiser. Most of what you hear is in other words newly composed.
Our Re-composition #
Outside the world of classical violin, this is a less known piece than The Four Seasons, and thus we decided that it wass less meaningful to work with obvious references as part of the interpretation. Instead, in searching for the core of the original, we discussed the tradition of theme and variation, and how the repetitive passacaglia form, with variations on a falling bass line, had similarities with contemporary minimalism and drone music.
Found objects #
The composition process was adopted from the Vivaldi piece, in which we started out by making recordings of the original parts. Here, the recordings were cut up into short phrases and loops, processed through and controlling my Eurorack modular system. In a way, these cut-ups turned into newly found ojects through the technological mediation. In a similar process, mediated by the violin, George then tried to find ways of imitating those phrases by means of extended techniques and findings in the original score. In the final composition, there’s an introductory drone, followed by a section representing every note in the original base line. And of course we end on the Picardy third.
unRaveled #
In 2011, we were asked to take part in the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter to be part of a series of re-mixed and re-composed classical “masterpieces”. We chose to work with Maurice Ravel’s famous piece Bolero. Already in it’s original version, Ravel famously stated that
it constitutes an experiment in a very special and limited direction, and should not be suspected of aiming at achieving anything different from, or anything more than, it actually does achieve. Before its first performance, I issued a warning to the effect that what I had written was a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of “orchestral tissue without music” — of one very long, gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and practically no invention except the plan and the manner of execution.
We stripped the piece down even further by taking away the melodic component, leaving only the rhythm (although converted into a process), the 18-bar periods, Ravel’s overtone instrumentation techniques, and the transposition at the end. unRaveled was included in GAHLMM’s album Break a leg listed below.
W314Z #
W314Z, pronounced Waltz, was based on Johann Strauss II’s famous waltz ”An Der Schönen Blauen Donau”, his op. 314. The first performance of the original took place in 1867, and then in the shape of an unaccompanied choir piece with satirical text (that was later re-written) and based on musical material previously used by Strauss. For the orchestral version, Strauss eventually added the intro and the coda to the 5 waltzes within the piece. The concept of re-composition thus seems to be built into the piece right from the start.
A New Year’s Concert #
Since the orignal piece is often played at the traditional Viennese New Year’s Concert, we decided to make a filmed studio concert just before new year’s eve during the pandemic in 2020. The different sections of W314Z were then published on our YouTube channel during the following days – as a stretched out new year’s concert.
Our Re-composition #
For our re-composition process, we wanted to connect club cultures of different centuries (if you can imagine the waltz events as a kinds of club culture). Thus, W314Z could be listened to as a journey through different kinds of club music, including styles like drone, ambient, IDM, techno, and gabber, if you want.
Structurally, we took off from the original’s basic structure with a slow Intro presenting material, followed by five waltzes and a final Coda that reuses and repeats previous material. Technically, we, again, recorded the original score played only on the violin, to be used as found material as a basis for acousmatic work with the material in the studio, using a Buchla 200e modular synthesizer and the SuperCollider programming environment. The composition process involved sending material back-and-forth between us with lots of feedback sessions and test rehearsals. We also presented the piece on several public concerts, while still being unsure of certain parts. As such, the concert situation itself was used a compositional tool, where unexpected things happened that was later either incorporated or taken out of in the final version.
Press photo #
GAHLMM #
GAHLMM is a unique ensemble specializing in new music performance. They have so far commissioned and performed new specially written works by Mats Gustafsson, Kaffe Matthews, Vinyl-terror & -horror, Dror Feiler, Tony Blomdahl, Paula Matthusen, and Lasse Marhaug.
GAHLMM are:
George Kentros: violin
Mattias Petersson: electronics
My Hellgren: cello
Anna Svensdotter: flutes
Lisa Ullén: piano
Henrik Olsson: percussion, friction, piezo elements
No, it’s not GOLLUM. It’s not GOLEM. It’s an even nastier creature. In a way, I feel inhibited speaking about GAHLMM, since I was a witness to the moment of their conception, perhaps a wild thing in a Freudian position, yet a very sound thing in a practical sense. Born a few months later, into this monster sextet, with the ability, just like Transformers, to break down into modules of duo-, trio-, quarto formats, this ensemble had the perfect disposition and adaptability to attack a broader program of contemporary music.
There are many fine ensembles of contemporary repertoire in Scandinavia, but this one sticks out; not only as the amalgamation of top-notch performers (who are equally superb improvisers), they, wholeheartedly, embrace the music of absolute resistance to exquisite or delicate practice of timbre, or enthralling space, that still haunts contemporary composers. They have had enough of the academic take on acoustic mindfulness. There is silence in the immense statement of a volcano, anyway. Burn the suits, while you are there. The same goes for order – never let mathematics, or symmetry, or attractive series be that fifth column that ruins a perfect and promising relationship with chaos. At the end of the day, you should be worried that your instrument might have gone through some domestic violence, or that some pieces might need an extra checkup call to the insurance company before the rehearsal.
This is an ensemble devoted to the straightforward nature of challenge; and by challenge, this does not mean the endless practice of tricky parts, or quantum mechanical scores; rather, it is the excitement of bringing it down to the wreck, to the prehistoric swamps of sound, sharing the sonic beauty of collapse and circumstance.
Johan Redin
RTTRSPRT #
RTTRSPRT is a duo comprised of Mattias Petersson and Marcus Wrangö. The project departs from our common interest in techno music, and especially the kind that borders the experimental and electroacustic music. Within the duo, we aim for new music that works equally well in clubs and more traditional concert venues.
The project was kick-started with a tour in Sweden in 2014, and the music that came out of that was later released as the two EP:s on Mörk Materia förlag.
One of our main interests is how to develop fluid live setups that enables interaction with both musical structure and sound. Those setups could be considered as compositions, navigated throughout a live performance.
“Ultra-academic boring techno; you’ll love it!”
