Donemus Webshop — Torstensson, Klas

The composer Klas Torstensson has lived and worked most of his adult life in the Netherlands, but his music crosses borders – in all respects. Despite the abstract nature of his music, sometimes there is a role for nature impressions from his native Sweden (including the North Pole region). In his outspoken modernist (often targeted as “noisy”) early works, he followed in the footsteps of Edgar Varèse and Iannis Xenakis. From the time when he wrote the opera The Expedition (1994-1999) and onwards, however, he enriched his original modernist approach with sounds, colors and even melody types from the classical symphonic tradition, which he uses dramatically and sometimes in shocking contrast with each other.

Torstensson’s compositions are performed by orchestras, ensembles and soloists worldwide and presented on most major European new music festivals: Huddersfield, Ultima (Oslo), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Wien Modern, Stockholm New Music, Nordic Music Days (Reykjavik/Malmö/Berlin), Gaudeamus (Amsterdam), Warsaw, Gaida (Vilnius), Festival van Vlaanderen (Belgium), Holland Festival (Amsterdam), GAS (Gothenburg), NYYD (Tallinn), Darmstadt, to name only a few.

Torstensson has received several awards: the 1991 Matthijs Vermeulen Prize, the most prestigious composition prize in The Netherlands, followed by the Stora Christ Johnson Priset in 1999, the major Swedish composition prize awarded by the Swedish Royal Music Academy. The Expedition was a nominee for the Nordic Council Music Prize 2006, whereas the Intermezzo from the same opera received a recommendation by the jury of the International Rostrum of Composers in 1999. For the orchestral work Polarhavet, Torstensson received the Swedish Music Publishers Award in 2009, followed by the Järnåkerstipendium in 2011 for In großer Sehnsucht. The orchestral works Fastlandet, Polarhavet, and the Violin Concerto were all three nominees for the Dutch Toonzetters Prize in 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively.
In 2012, Torstensson was awarded the Hilding Rosenberg Prize by the Swedish Composer’s Union (Föreningen Svenska Tonsättare).