My Blue Piano
Teresia Bokor, Blagoj Lamnjov, Lisa Långbacka, Christoffer Nobin, LisaRydberg, Johan Ullén

"I will now always becompletely alone,
like the great angel
who walked beside me."

My Blue Piano exploresfeelings of loneliness, belonging and rootlessness touching on what it means tolive and create in exile. The music on the album brings together three CentralEuropean composers, Béla Bartók, Vítězslava Kaprálová, and György Ligeti, eachof whom was forced to leave their homeland or prevented from returning.

Running throughout the album arepoems by Else Lasker-Schüler who lived in Jerusalem during the Second WorldWar. It was there she wrote her final collection of poetry, Mein BlauesKlavier, which gives the album its title. Lasker-Schüler was a poet whoboth provoked and impressed, a striking presence on the streets of Jerusalem,whose flamboyant lifestyle and eccentric dress never quite found a place in hernew city.

The album is structured in four acts – New York, Paris, Wien andJerusalem – cities where Bartók, Kaprálová, Ligeti and Lasker-Schüler eachlived in exile.

New York
This act opens with a clarinet solo, a nod to the beginning of Gershwin’s Rhapsodyin Blue, where cultural expressions merge and blend. Here, American andHungarian musical traditions meet in a new shared soundscape. The clarinet,along with other instruments associated with Hungarian folk music, creates asonic world filled with memory and longing.

Béla Bartók left his belovedhomeland during World War II and lived in exile in New York. The Hungarian folksong Elindultam szép hazámból ("I’m fleeing my belovedhomeland") stayed with him throughout his life and holds a central placein this act.

Paris
Czech composer and conductor Vítězslava Kaprálová was never able to return toher homeland. On Christmas night in 1939, her Prélude de Noël wasbroadcast from Paris to an occupied Czechoslovakia. A melody from this workreturns in this act, set against a Parisian backdrop where longing for love isdeeply felt. A version of Smetana’s Moldau, by Kaprálová’s fellowcountryman, also weaves together two of her songs.

Wien
This act features fragments of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, a piecefrequently played on Hungarian radio during the 1956 revolution. That sameyear, György Ligeti fled Hungary hidden aboard a postal train, later settlingin exile in Vienna.

His song Der Sommer (“TheSummer”) evokes green fields slowly fading into autumn. As the train travelsacross the Hungarian plains, playful clarinet lines suggest transience and thefeeling of having no true homeland.

Jerusalem
The album’s final act takes us to Jerusalem, where Staffan Storm’scomposition Der große Engel sets Else Lasker-Schüler’spoem War sie der große Engel to music. Here, the circle closesin an atmosphere where rootlessness may itself carry a sense of belonging.

My Blue Piano is supported by the Swedish Arts Council.

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