Orchestra

Rolf Wallin:
Manyworlds
For large orchestra (2010)

Modern physics makes the most spectacular conceptions of religious mysticism appear oddly sober and down-to-earth.This is particularly true of the so-called string and membrane theories, in which the universe is described as a continuous web of vibrations, where energy and matter (included ourselves...) are illusions created by the frequencies of vibrating "strings" or multidimensional "membranes".
Analogies to music are abundant in quantum physics, and as a composer I have always thought of music as a universe in which amazing multidimensional and multicoloured sculptures can be created. In my works I have tried to create a few of the infinite possibilities.

This total liberty is wonderful, but it causes also a constant dilemma:What makes one artistic decision better than another? Where does the music go from where it is right now? This is something that comes to mind when I try to get my head around the mind-boggling Many-world theory. It deals with a very large, perhaps infinite number of universes; and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but didn't, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes. So there is a universe in which Columbus did not reach America, one where the entire Milky Way is nonexistent, etc. etc.
Of course it is impossible to describe this in a piece for orchestra. But in Manyworlds I deal with many "parallel musics" where every music contains the seed of all the other musics.We can therefore travel from one music to another within a fraction of a second, and one musical situation can have one outcome one time, and later a totally different one.

Hmm. Sounds like the description of a symphony? Well, maybe composers and quantum physicists are more similar than we think?

Rolf Wallin:
Manyworlds
for stort orkester (2010)

Moderne fysikk får de mest spektakulære forestillinger i religiøs mystikk til å virke underlig trauste og jordnære.Ta for eksempel strenge- og membranteoriene, der universet beskrives som en kontinuerlig vev av vibrasjoner, der energi og materie (inkludert deg og meg) er illusjoner skapt av vibrerende strenger eller flerdimensjonale "membraner" som påvirker hverandre, og der hele universet kan gjenfinnes i en vanndråpe, slik hele bildet finnes i en liten bit av et hologram.
Kvantefysikken bruker mange musikalske analogier, og som komponist har jeg alltid opplevd musikk som et univers der man kan skape fantastiske mangefargede og mangedimensjonale skulpturer. I min musikk har jeg forsøkt å gjenskape noen av de uendelig mange mulighetene som finnes.
Den totale friheten er fantastisk, men man sitter også i et konstant dilemma: Hvorfor er ett valg bedre enn et annet? Nøyaktig hvor går musikken fra der den er akkurat nå?
Dette minner meg om den ufattelige Many-world-teorien. Der tenker man seg at det finnes uendelig mange parallelle univers, og alt som kan ha skjedd i fortida, men som ikke har skjedd, har faktisk skjedd i ett eller flere av disse universene. Så det finnes univers der Hitler vant 2. verdenskrig, og univers der Melkeveien ikke finnes. Det er nok mange som går rundt og spør seg selv: "Hvordan hadde livet mitt vært dersom den jeg fridde til hadde sagt ja?" Ta det helt med ro, det finnes i følge Many-worlds en masse univers der dere er gift, og formodentlig en masse univers der dere er skilt igjen...
Selvsagt er det umulig å beskrive dette i løpet av en halvtime i et orkesterstykke. Men i Manyworlds jobber jeg med mange "musikker", der hver musikk inneholder frøet til alle andre musikker i stykket.Vi kan dermed reise fra en musikk til en annen på en brøkdel av et sekund. Slik at en lyrisk Adagio bare ved å lene seg litt til siden kan omskape seg til en forrykende Allegro barbaro i løpet av brøkdelen av et sekund. Eller til noe annet. Eller til noe helt annet...

With Manyworlds Rolf Wallin confirms his position as Norway's leading contemporary composer. Well formed and sometimes cool sounds in a surprising course of events shows a musical dramaturg in top form. Here everything was organically connected in a well-wrought sound sculpture, for the entire half hour's duration – from a deep primeval plane the orchestral sound stretched, warped and folded in ever new facets, but never bombastic, never heavy. Rolf Wallin's orchestral craft is of world class. At the same time he is unique in his non-pompous, almost coolly calculating mode of expression, like in the long mid section where transparent string sounds are allowed to lie and shimmer statically for a radically long time. But he does engage, as one of the few confident dramaturgs of Norwegian contemporary music, something the intense and surprisingly sudden ending bore witness of. The music comes to silence in this world, but definitively carries on in my head.
Ragnhild Veire, NRK Radio,1/1/0001


On the Manyworlds 3D premiere: In Manyworlds Boya Bøckman offers planet-like circles and barren landscapes. ”This is how the world is”, the video tells us. This is how the world is that we cannot see, with distances we cannot fathom. Skeleton structures and tubes meander infinitely. We don’t know exactly what we are experiencing; what could be the surface of an unknown planet could also be the skin of a small animal. The orchestra sparkled in the meeting with Rolf Wallin’s effective material. Wallin knows the medium and conjures the structures: sometimes with intense pulsation, sometimes in thundering blocks of sound with military tight percussion. Then gliding in melodic movements, in the context they sounded weightless. 
Ida Habbestad, Aftenposten, 2/16/2012 

Rolf Wallin:
Act
for large orchestra (2003)

Act is a piece about speed, about the joy of activity, and, above all, about the power of acting together. In a time when competition dominates every sphere of human activity, it is good to be reminded that, from the slaying of mammoths to the creation of the utterly complex societies in which we live today,the foundation of mankind’s success is our ability to cooperate.And for me, one of the most amazing examples of human collaboration is the symphony orchestra, in which around 100 extremely skilled and highly individual musicians act together as one enormous, resounding organism, transforming the rigid lines and dots of the score into living, moving yet ephemeral cathedrals of sound.
While writing Act, I carried with me the enthusiastic and warm feedback I received, from musicians and audience alike, during the Cleveland Orchestra's performance of my Clarinet Concerto the year before. And I have asked myself: ‘How would this huge, wonderful musical organism act inside my mind?’ During the ten minutes of the piece, I allow the orchestra to summon all its forces, so that it can discover how the players can best work together. Then, finally, the music achieves a momentum that sends it pulsating into the last collective surges of forwards motion.

"Concert-wise, Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducting the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra in a multi-purpose venue that doubles as a gymnasium and concert hall may not to appear to have the makings of musical legend but the final concert of the Nordland Music Festival in Northern Norway this summer transcended its surroundings. Composer-in-residence Rolf Wallin's orchestral tour de force Act gave the Oslo band a chance to flex their collective muscle and gave the Bodø Spectrum the kind of acoustic onslaught it's not likely to receive agan any time soon. The capacity crowd loved it and so did I. Keep an eye for the studio recording on Ondine (it may be worth taking a home and contents insurance policy first)."
Hayden Jones, Gramophone January 2008

The concluding work of the evening, Rolf Wallin's Act, was also like a Stravinsky commentary. (...) Wallin's work appeared as a more than worthy commentary on the great Russian.Wallin showed full command over the art of orchestration and timbre, and the musical playfulness with which he treated the musical form is quite unique in a Norwegian context. I'd love to have taken my hat off to him, if it hadn't been blown off my head in one of the rawest performances I've heard the Oslo Philharmonic deliver. In no way was the work a compromise to please the audience, but its unyielding honesty, together with the extraordinary interpretation, showed contemporary music at its best. Hats off, gentlemen, Rolf Wallin's Act will be standing as a standard work in Norwegian orchestral repertoire.
Magnus Andersson, Morgenbladet

Rolf Wallin: 
Appearances
for large ensemble
or small orchestra(2002)

This planet has seen many lifeforms emerge and vanish on its surface.  Each of them has had a lifespan, long or short. A species can be marginal or totally dominant, and its extinction can be almost imperceptibly gradual or dramatically abrupt. Similarly, in human history, great and not so great ideas, good and evil, have appeared, disappeared, and reappeared in a bewildering, fascinating stream. One example is the highly refined and seemingly durable thoughts of art and philosophy, currently almost suffocating in the deluge of sewer water from the entertainment industry. The Earth is full of these patterns, like a midsummer's sky: the clouds emerge literally from thin air, grow, reshape and vanish, the fate of each of them impossible to predict for the spectator.

This music behaves in very much the same manner. Yes, I say "it behaves", because during the composition process, I have let the different musical entities in the piece evolve almost on their own, instead of by a preconceived principle. They also have suggested to me how much and where in the timespan of the work they should appear and disappear, and their relationship with the other musical "inhabitants" of the piece. Some novelists describe how their characters start to live their own life during the writing of a book, and that's exactly how I have felt during the creation of this piece. It has grown in the tension between the manyfaceted interaction of the wills and needs of the different musical entities, and my own urge as a composer to read a meaningful pattern in it.