Located in the UK
Located in the USA
Located in Europe
- Britta Byström
Picnic at Hanging Rock (2010)
- Edition Wilhelm Hansen Copenhagen (World)
Programme Note
”What we see and what we seem are but a dream, a dream within a dream” – These words opens Peter Wier’s film on Joan Lindsay’s novel Picnic at Hanging Rock from 1967. The story takes place on Valentines Day 1900. A group of school girls go on a picnic at Hanging Rock in Australia and get caught up in a volcanic eruption. Three of the girls disappear without a trace – as if they where swallowed up by the mountain.
Inspired by Peter Weir’s poetic and many layered film I have composed a tone poem – with the emphasis on poem – or poetry – as opposed to programme music. Disappearance is an important motif. The piece is a series of disappearances and transformations – one after another. At the end you can hear how the sound of the orchestra disappears in a swarm of clanging triangles – a way of picturing the girls disappearing into the mountain.
I have tried to catch several other of the characteristics of the film: The school girls in their white dresses, the dangerous yet alluring mountain where the watches mysteriously stop at 12, the spell that makes the girls climb higher and higher, and – at the end – the unanswered hesitant question: what really did happen?
Britta Byström
Inspired by Peter Weir’s poetic and many layered film I have composed a tone poem – with the emphasis on poem – or poetry – as opposed to programme music. Disappearance is an important motif. The piece is a series of disappearances and transformations – one after another. At the end you can hear how the sound of the orchestra disappears in a swarm of clanging triangles – a way of picturing the girls disappearing into the mountain.
I have tried to catch several other of the characteristics of the film: The school girls in their white dresses, the dangerous yet alluring mountain where the watches mysteriously stop at 12, the spell that makes the girls climb higher and higher, and – at the end – the unanswered hesitant question: what really did happen?
Britta Byström
Media
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Scores
Reviews
A fascinating piece, and probably the best Britta Byström has written to date.
17th April 2010
Byström creates an atmosphere which is both mysterious and enticing.
16th April 2010
Discography
Britta Byström - Invisible Cities
- LabelDaphne
- Catalogue Number1046
- ConductorDaniel Blendulf
- EnsembleMalmö Symphony Orchestra