Trapped

A hypnotic concert at Paulus Church with the Oslo String Quartet and harpsichordist Lars Henrik Johansen, spanning new Norwegian music, Górecki and the French Baroque.

A repeated figure can be a pulse, a surface, a mechanism, a trap. It can hold time in place or make it spin faster than thought. Repetition lies at the heart of this late-night concert: bright, percussive and mechanical, but also fragile and hallucinatory.

Henryk Górecki’s Harpsichord Concerto is nine minutes of compressed energy. The amplified harpsichord cuts through the strings with a dry, relentless force, while insistent repetitions keep the music in motion.

Jonas Lie Skaarud’s Transparent Fabric draws on field recordings made in Oslo during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the city was almost empty and the sounds of its infrastructure were strangely exposed, including fans, ventilation systems and transformer stations. The quartet emerges from this mechanical backdrop, recedes into it and merges with it.

From Pancrace Royer’s L’Aimable to Le Vertigo, elegance tips into turbulence, before François Couperin’s Les Barricades mystérieuses closes the concert with another kind of dizziness. Interlocking patterns alternately obstruct and reveal the music, while fragments of melody emerge through openings in the harmonic walls.

Programme

Henryk Górecki Harpsichord Concerto, Op. 40 (1980)
for amplified harpsichord and strings

Jonas Lie Skaarud Transparent Fabric (2022/23)
for string quartet and electronics

Pancrace Royer L’Aimable and Le Vertigo (1746)
for harpsichord

François Couperin Les Barricades mystérieuses (1717)
for harpsichord

Want to know more?

• "Transparent Fabric grows out of the image of a thin sheet of fabric moving in the wind, becoming more or less transparent depending on the viewer's distance, so that what lies behind is alternately revealed and concealed," says Jonas Lie Skaarud about his work, written for and premiered by the Oslo String Quartet in 2023.
• Górecki called his harpsichord concerto a "prank", seemingly a playful, deliberately lighter work set against the large-scale, contemplative and sacred compositions that surround it in his catalogue.
• Couperin never explained the title Les Barricades mystérieuses. For three centuries, it has inspired speculation, from masked balls and veils to a lover’s eyelashes and Freemasonry. Listen to the suspensions, each held note preventing the harmony from resolving, and decide for yourself what the barricades are holding back.
• Paulusfestivalen is a neighbourhood festival in and around Paulus Church in Grünerløkka, arranged by volunteers, local schools and cultural workers. Through this collaboration, Ultima invites audiences to hear new and old music in the heart of the city as a concentrated, shared experience, open to anyone willing to stay.