The 5th String (Femte strängen)
"a remarkably delicate sounding virtuoso performance made up largely of ever expanding and more complex arpeggiations that had the bow seesawing over the strings and at one point the bow ran almost silently over the edge of the violin body no doubt playing on the eponymous 5th String"
- http://sound-scotland.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Curious-Chamber-L...
Aaron Packard, Skogensemble, New York 2011.
Lightness and Quickness are at the top of Italo Calvino’s interesting list of values in his ”Six Memos for the Next Millenium” that he wrote for lectures at Harvard 1985. The list continues with Exactitude, Visibility and Multiplicity. I like his list.
The 5th String for solo violin is the last one in a family of works that I call Rhythm and Sound. These works are all built on arpeggiation on harmonics and in this solo piece the length of the arpeggiation, the number of pitches in every stroke of the bow, is one of the rhythmic and technical things that I focused on. The 5th String was composed in collaboration with the young amazing violinist Karin Hellqvist.
HS
