Tedxt: Hilde Holbæk-Hanssen. Photo: Lisbeth Medbøe Risnes/National Library
- What’s all this about?’ asks Olav Anton Thommessen when we meet in a Bergen hotel lobby. - I’ve been asked to write about you for Ultima’s printed programme, and would like to talk to you about that. I’m supposed to write about you reaching 60 and about the works of yours that are being performed at the festival. - How kind!
In honour of Thommessen's fiftieth birthday, a collection of his articles was published entitled Olav Anton Thommessen: Inspiration – Tradition-bearer – Provocateur was published. That was ten years ago already! ‘Fifty is something you celebrate; reaching sixty is a form of recognition,’ says Thommessen. He wasn't around to celebrate his birthday.
Now he won't be allowed to get off so lightly. He is a natural choice of contributor to Ultima’s theme of ‘Music and Memory’, despite the fact that only one of the three works of his to be performed is taken from his many compositions based on material by dead musical predecessors.
This year's programme includes Through a Prism with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and Øystein Birkeland (cello); Oslo Sinfonietta's concertante performance of the opera The Hermaphrodite; and pianist Joachim Kjeldsaas Kwetzinsky's interpretation of EingeBACHt. This last work was written for JS Bach’s anniversary in 1985 and uses material from the old master's Toccata in D.
Writing about Thommessen offers something of a challenge. He is a firebrand, exploding with knowledge and opinions. One minute he’s raging furiously, the next he’s warm and calm. From this perspective he is the perfect interview subject, but when it comes to his insight into musical matters, it is difficult to match him – not to mention his enthusiasm for music. And he is highly critical of what usually gets written about music.
A privileged group of people are granted one-to-one ‘lessons’ with Thommessen. It’s not possible to converse with more than one person at a time! The sessions, which take place at intervals of several months, begin at 7.30 pm in the kitchen, where the guest is served a glass of wine and forbidden to help prepare the food. Matters sociological, musical and personal are eagerly discussed while the host moves back and forth between fridge and pressure-cooker. After the meal has been eaten, Thommessen and his guest retire to the notorious ‘composer’s attic’ for the evening’s concert-cum-lecture. The walls are lined with sound and film recordings. The DVDs are racked along the roof beams. The place is a treasure trove of musical highlights: operas from the Bayreuth and Salzburg festivals, and film footage of yesteryear’s geniuses such as Mengelberg and Furtwangler is screened via projection equipment that he has miraculously managed to squeeze into the cramped space.
But for the most part his guests are treated to an inexhaustible arsenal of recordings – ranging from early music to contemporary – and preferably authentic interpretations of the great masters. Thommessen owns tens of thousands of CDs, LPs and tapes; as he talks enthusiastically about the next piece of music we’re going to hear he lunges, apparently at random, and plucks out the CD in question. When asked how he manages to remember where everything is, he says distractedly, ‘My dear, I live here!’
Then the listening begins, and this is the point where a mere journalist can find themselves humbled. Thommessen's relationship with what he hears is intense and sensual; watching his arm and head movements, the term ‘musical gesture’ takes on a new meaning. You find yourself drawn into this mode of listening; the sound moves in plastic gestures, powerfully, hypnotically, forwards, upwards, outwards... and you begin to breathe with it.
But what can really be written about it? To find out, we have put the challenge to Thommessen the day before he is due to talk about his own and others’ treatments of earlier composers’ works at the Bergen International Festival.
– Can you say something about the cello/organ concerto Through a Prism?
– It was a work I just had to write. A boyhood dream of writing something really big. A pubertal explosion! Pitting a large solo instrument against a small one, on either side of a large orchestra, was very fascinating. I took a year and a half off from my studies at the Music Academy to do it. I hadn't been commissioned to write it, so it was a bit of a chance to take. And it took more than twenty years before it was performed in concert, which was at the Bergen Festival last year.
– But you received the Nordic Council Music Prize for the work in 1990?
– Yes, on the basis of a radio recording made by Karsten Andersen and the Oslo Philharmonic with Truls Mørk on cello and Kåre Nordstoga on organ.
– What was the starting point of the work?
– I’ve always loved the cello. An incredibly dramatic instrument! I began playing it myself when I was eighteen after stealing a cello from a fellow student at The Hill School in New York.
– Sorry?
– I stole it. It was in terrible shape and I put it right. Spent a lot of money on having it repaired. After that I considered it mine. I won the court case.
– Court case?
– Yes, the other boy’s parents wanted it back.
– Not really surprising, perhaps?
– Well, my parents helped me with the case, so we won. It was fair.
– How was it fair?
– My parents had given my sister a car for her twenty-first birthday, so it was only fair that they should pay for the court case.
After this dose of Thommessenian logic we turn to his opera The Hermaphrodite. It was begun in 1970, completed in 1982, and performed to great acclaim three years later at the Royal Opera in Sweden, who also performed it at the Bergen International Festival the same year. Nobody has seen it since. At least now we will have another chance to hear it.
– The opera is about sexuality. Each scene presents a different approach to the subject, dealing with themes of lust, love and sexuality. The final scene is pretty grotesque, that’s why nobody wants to put it on, says Thommessen.
– I have considered doing what the Czech theatrical ensemble Laterna Magica did at the World Expo in Montreal in 1967: composing an alternative final scene and letting the audience vote on whether they want the grotesque ending or the happy one. But I doubt it would help. I’ve suggested it to the Norwegian National Opera, but they weren’t interested. I thought that, since they didn’t want an opera on the theme that most operas are about –love – then I should try the other big theme, murder. And so I wrote Hertuginnen dør, in which there are four murders in forty-five minutes. But they didn’t want that one either.’
And that is as far as we got. Not exactly an in-depth look at Thommessen’s music, but it doesn’t really matter. His music needs to be experienced one-to-one.
Translation: Robert Young
The article was published in Norwegian in the Ultima program book 2006.
The translation was published in Ultima 25 - a 25 year celebration 1991 - 2015.
Published with permission.