On April 10, the clarinet concerto SEMA by Swedish composer Jacob Mühlrad premieres with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and clarinetist Magnus Holmander under the baton of Martin Fröst. Another performance follows the next day at Berwaldhallen in Stockholm.
SEMA engages with the mystical traditions of Sufism and the Maqam scale, an ancient Arabic scale with roots in the Middle Eastern Jewish community. It is inspired by the Sufi Whirling ritual, embodying ‘the perpetual motion of the universe, from the macroscopic orbits of planets to the microscopic spin of atoms.’
The orchestra becomes an organism that swirls around, changing colour and shape, whereas the clarinet melodies lead the narrative like a preacher, guiding through a musical representation of spiritual and cosmic cycles.
The work was commissioned by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
For more information, please see the website of the orchestra.
