With Anders Hillborg (b. 1954), the question often seems less to be which melody, which motif, or which harmonic development underlies a composition, and more to be what sound still exists that we have not heard before. He himself likes to say that he creates sounds that cannot be immediately identified. Precisely here lies one of the great attractions of Lost Landscapes, a new CD on which the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra (GSO) brings together three works from different periods of Hillborg's oeuvre.
Hillborg is among the most important Swedish composers of his generation. His background as a choral singer and improvising keyboardist, and his early interest in electronic music, help explain why timbre, movement, and tone colour are often at least as important to him as melodic development. He writes music in which the orchestra sometimes sounds recognisably like an orchestra and a few moments later seems to transform into something more readily associated with electronics, film, or nature. Sibelius and Ligeti are never far away, but neither are jazz, popular music, and the sonic experiments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The result is difficult to place in a single stylistic category, and it is precisely this mobility that makes this CD appealing.
When sound becomes landscape
The CD opens with Through Lost Landscapes, a work from 2019. The strings begin with slow glissandi, after which the sound opens up ever further and three powerful chords break forth from the orchestra. Then the atmosphere changes abruptly: rhythm and movement take over and the music rushes at great speed through different states. A strong dramatic tension arises, without Hillborg telling a classical story.
The work's distinctiveness lies precisely in his treatment of the orchestra. Instrumental groups here do not simply pass themes to one another; colours slide over each other and form a constantly changing whole. In Ecstatic this becomes particularly tangible. The jazzy turns give the music an unexpected suppleness, while beneath the glitter a restlessness remains that never makes the exuberance merely festive – as if the intensity of the sound itself is not entirely to be trusted.
In the CD booklet, Andrew Mellor connects the work on the one hand with the abundance and multicoloured quality of an almost jungle-like landscape, and on the other with a warning about what may be lost in it. This contrast does not become a programmatic message but remains present as an undercurrent. Striking are the peculiar woodwind sounds, which evoke birds without literally imitating them. For a moment the orchestra seems to become an environment in which all kinds of forms of life are audible, only to dissolve again into abstraction.
Under Pekka Kuusisto this layering receives ample space, while the GSO realises the large dynamic contrasts with great precision: nothing drowns in the massive passages, and the finer woodwind figures also remain clearly audible.
The voice as memory
With The Strand Settings the musical world changes dramatically. The four-part cycle from 2013 is based on texts by the Canadian-American poet Mark Strand – from Black Sea (2006) and three parts of Dark Harbor (1993) – and was commissioned at the request of Renée Fleming.
Strand's poetry moves between memory, longing, loss, and a sometimes explicit erotic charge. Hillborg does not translate these poems into a traditional song form. The vocal line takes on more the character of a musical train of thought: now clearly delineated, then hesitant or almost spoken. The orchestra, too, remains more than a background accompaniment. It builds its own sonic space around the voice, responds to what she sings, and regularly acquires an independent dramatic significance.
Harmonically, too, Hillborg keeps balancing on the border between support and uncertainty. The music has a clear tonal pull, but refuses for a long time to commit to a single centre. This continual searching corresponds closely to Strand's poetry. Only in the final part does the E-flat major chord bring a distinct calm: not a sentimental release, but the sense that a musical tension can at last be let go for a moment.
Ida Falk Winland takes on the soprano part that was sung by Renée Fleming at the premiere. Her strength lies not in displaying vocal possibilities but in the way she gives the words musical weight. Through her clear diction and controlled phrasing, the emotional charge often remains beneath the surface, without the text losing directness. The voice does not stand opposite the orchestra as a soloist against an accompanist, but seems to dissolve into it. This gives The Strand Settings a special intimacy: less a demonstration of vocal virtuosity than a musical study of memory, longing, and transience.
Beyond the familiar
With Sound Atlas, written in 2018, Hillborg pushes the familiar orchestral sound even further. Already in the instrumentation, the orchestra is deliberately set off balance. At its centre is the verrophone, an instrument of glass tubes which, like a rubbed wineglass, produces a broad and complex sound. The result is a richness of tone colours in which one soon imagines oneself in a different world.
In Crystalline this sound is surrounded by an orchestra in which the tones seem constantly to shift. What initially sounds familiar thereby acquires something uncertain: as if the music is continually searching for a balance that just escapes the ear.
Afterwards, Sound Atlas unfolds as a series of sharply contrasting sound worlds. In River of Glass, bells and high woodwinds shimmer, while Vaporised Toy Pianos, with piano and percussion, evokes an almost mechanical, toy-like world. From these ever-shifting soundscapes, Vortex builds up the tension until it finally erupts into a furious movement.
And then something remarkable happens. After so many sounds that can hardly be pinned down, Hillborg returns in Hymn to something immediately recognisable: a melody in the cellos, later taken up by the other strings, which grows into an intense and passionate close. The verrofoon remains present, but the melody no longer withdraws into an unreal world – it stays with the strings, tangible and human, and gives the preceding sound experiments a different perspective.
An orchestra as a colour palette
The choice of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra is particularly fortunate. Since the 2025-2026 season, Pekka Kuusisto has been principal guest conductor. Kuusisto conducts Through Lost Landscapes and The Strand Settings here, while Brad Lubman takes charge of Sound Atlas. These different backgrounds prove relevant: Kuusisto gives the first two works great mobility without losing coherence, while Lubman's experience with complex scores is an asset in Sound Atlas – the many layers remain distinguishable without the whole falling apart.
The recording, made in the Gothenburg Concert Hall, is also convincing. There is ample room for the large orchestral outbursts, while the finer details of Hillborg's instrumentation remain audible as well.
From the constantly moving Through Lost Landscapes, via the restrained intensity of The Strand Settings, to the ever-changing Sound Atlas: this recording shows how consistently Hillborg thinks from sound. He is less concerned with finding new melodies or harmonies than with finding new ways to make the orchestra sound – music that sometimes estranges, sometimes surprises, and at its strongest moments does both at once. In this way, the disc becomes more than a survey of contemporary orchestral writing: an invitation to listen again to what an orchestra can be.
