You have developed several pieces with Skogen across quite a long period of time. How would you say that your relationship with the musicians and the way they interpret your music has changed over the years?

Yes, having had the opportunity to work with Skogen has really been of decisive importance when developing my music. I more or less started Skogen some thirteen or fourteen years ago in order to try out certain ideas, methods and materials that I had been working on and thinking about for quite some time before daring to present them to an ensemble. So working with Skogen has definitely influenced my work greatly and helped clarify things for me as regards how my music could work. I think that things would have been very different, and much more difficult – if not impossible - without this possibility of working with an ensemble of players who I trusted and who knew my work, and who were able at the earliest stages to experiment together to bring my first pieces into being.

By now the ensemble is used to the way my pieces normally work, and so we tend to approach them with a healthy dose of independence. The pieces serve as a clearly articulated environment or a framework within which the musicians move very freely in accordance with their own individual dispositions and leanings, while the materials and the temporal framework serves to guarantee an overarching coherence to the music.

You’ve worked with several other ensembles in recent years, but – to use a football analogy from football - does working with Skogen feel like playing on your home ground?

Yes, I guess it still does in a way: there’s hardly any instruction needed apart from perhaps a few tiny remarks when rehearsing a new piece. The players all seem very much at home with how the music works and act very freely and independently in relation to it while still staying true to it. But working with other ensembles in later years has been very valuable and equally rewarding: to get to the opportunity to hear other musicians with other experiences and inclinations approaching the music and finding their own ways of cultivating it, as individuals as well as collectives, has been very interesting and informative as well as being a very joyful experience, to get to be surprised and to learn something from a different perspective.

I wonder what is the attraction of Schubert, and of the very romantic landscape painting by Julius von Leypold which you chose for the cover of the CD? Is there are barely suppressed romanticism in your music?

Yes, that’s a very good question which I’ve asked myself repeatedly and to which I haven’t really had an unambiguous answer to so far. On the contrary I quite often find myself estranged from much romantic music with its sometimes grand gestures and excessive expressivity, as compared to music from, for example, the Renaissance and baroque eras towards, to which I tend to respond in a much more immediate and unequivocally positive manner. And quite often it’s the very small things and not the grand gestures or extensive developments in Schubert or other romantic music that happen to attract me and stir my interest and imagination. Things such as the atmosphere of a short introduction, the voice leading in a short passage, a melody here and there, a chord or two, a surprising modulation. But I do also realise that I may have a certain inclination to some ideas and feelings perhaps often associated with romanticism, of longing and surrender, of vulnerability and the nocturnal.

And if my music should be called romantic it’s hopefully not so much because of it being a manifestation of a romantic subject as it is a matter of the disappearance or gradual dissolution of a romantic subject, of perhaps becoming and being part of a larger existence and its various transformations.

Reviews:

Among Another Timbre's many other notable achievements, championing Magnus Granberg and his ensemble Skogen must rank very highly. Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn ('Now, there won't be much more walking') is the eighth Granberg release on the label, the fourth featuring Skogen. For anyone who has listened to any of the previous seven releases, that information alone will be enough for them to investigate this release further. As on past albums, Granberg's title composition was inspired by—but not copied from—other composers' pieces; in this case, among other sources, he revisited Schubert's song cycle Die Winterreise which inspired his first piece issued on Another Timbre, "Ist Gefallen in den Schnee."

Regarding that grey area, Granberg has said of this composition, "the piece turned out to use four pools of material using slightly different tonal modes, all containing comparatively large collections of melodic fragments, extended melodies, chords, timbres, single sounds and rhythms. The different pools of materials were then combined with different time values and ordered into a temporal framework consisting of a number of different sequences, through which the performers navigate with some help from a set of guidelines..."

As the players use materials from those four pools, their music sounds original, coherent and integrated. Because they navigate it themselves rather than being conducted or cued-in, they never sound rigid or regimented. Such a healthy balance between composer and performers undoubtedly places this music in the grey area; more importantly, it creates music that is relaxed and relaxing and that handsomely repays repeated listening. In other words, it is well up to the consistently high standard that we have come to expect of Magnus Granberg and Skogen. And Another Timbre.

John Eyles, All About Jazz

When I wrote about Magnus Granberg’s last release, Nattens skogar, I compared his music to late Morton Feldman: each one is the same yet each one is different. This new CD, recorded with his regular group Skogen, again contains a single ensemble work. Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn is nearly an hour long and features nine musicians but retains the starker sound-world of the quartet in Nattens skogar. It begins with a scraping sound punctuated by two chords on prepared piano. The consistently low volume levels throughout belie the sharp relief of the sounds being played. This low but distinct relief continues throughout; a slow, irregular rhythm of percussive sounds, some electronically amplified, against a faint background of string drones, electronic buzzing, field recordings, or silence. At one point, a high keening can be heard from either a violin, a recorded bird, a bowed vibraphone or feedback, or possibly a combination of the above. Where earlier works by Granberg presented a continuity of sound, here the interplay of sound and silence builds a more complex image, making each new sound’s introduction or withdrawal all the more striking, whether it’s bursts of line noise or recordings of wildlife. I’d described Nattens skogar as “the clearest expression I’ve yet heard of the aesthetic world Granberg has constructed” and Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn continues that development, where the overall image grows more mysterious even as each element comes into clearer focus.

Ben Harper, Boring Like A Drill

The English translation I found most apt for the title of this disc (a line from 'Die Krähe', from Schubert's 'Winterreise') was, "Well, it will not go much further", though the composer uses, "Now, there won't be much more walking". Combined with a perusal of the lovely painting by Julius von Leypold, depicting a man walking through a blustery landscape, I found this helpful in discerning a way around and through Granberg's music, something that's given me a certain amount of difficulty in the past. Much of that "problem" (surely more my issue than a general one) was ascertaining a structure that I could grasp onto. By approaching the music as a kind of walk, with little or no expectation of points of particular interest, simply getting into the rhythm of certain quasi-regularities--the path, the growth along the sides, the odd stone of tree--I found it an engaging, rewarding experience.

For this recording, Skogen is essentially a nonet with strings and percussion, consisting of Anna Lindal (violin), Angharad Davies (violin), Leo Svensson Sander (cello), Erik Carlsson (percussion), John Eriksson (vibraphone, whistling), Henrik Olsson (percussion, objects, contact mics), Petter Wästberg (objects, contact mics, mixing board), d'incise (electronics, objects) and Granberg (prepared piano). I have no idea about the score or instructions therein, but in one sense--not a negative one--the music meanders for its 56 minutes, or perhaps it's better to say that it ambles, slowly. There are small quasi-rhythms scattered throughout, from a tapping right at the beginning to various vibraphone and piano sequences, patterns I equate with steps taken by the walker, going for a bit, pausing for a look at something, continuing. These sharper sounds weave their way through a haze of lines from the strings, maybe light, cold rainfall. There's an amount of stasis, the kind of sameness (though, of course not sameness) one might experience walking through a purportedly nondescript field. Soft gongs answer birdsong, the landscape drifts by, dulcet here, more acerbic there. Released steam, the rattle of branches in the oncoming wind. It's really like a closely observed, sensitively experienced stroll through space. In the last few minutes, there's a wonderful set of brief cadences on medium low percussion (tablas?), an entirely beguiling sound. I felt as though I'd found an especially beautiful stone or a centuries old coin.

Excellent work, attentively and sympathetically played by the ensemble.

Brian Olewnick, Just Outside

Det långa stycket Nun, es wird nicht mehr gehn har avlägset med Schuberts sångcykel Die Winterreise att göra, titeln är hämtad från sången/dikten Die Krähe som handlar om en vandrare som knappt orkar ta sig fram längre. Det finns i just den kompositionen en stillastående och melankolisk stämning. Främst är det den som förbinder Granberg och Skogen med Schubert. En romantisk försjunkenhet, att smaka på hur det är att förlora, gå under, inte orka. I det gränslandet mellan lust och undergång rör sig också denna musik. När andra tar till dramatik och till varje pris vill ge hopp rör sig Granberg i ett tömt land där bara stämningar återstår. Hans piano rör sig rituellt, monotont som en oregelbunden tidens pendel. Kring dessa sönderrivna fraser kretsar de andra instrumenten. De känns som en cirkel av ljud, där violinerna skär ut konturerna men också fyller ut dem, vibrafonen ger rörelse och riktning. Den småljudande elektroniken och slagverken skapar en orolig yta som skimrar men också registrerar kyla och balans mellan yttre och inre skeenden.

Som ni förstår är det en lågmäld musik som rör sig hela tiden, och där gruppen tillsammans vänder och vrider på materialet. Inga gester, ingen flört med publiken, bara innerlighet. Det liknar inget annat.

Thomas Millroth, Orkesterjournalen

From Stockholm based improviser/composer Magnus Granberg Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn is another lengthy, but very worthy slice of modern composition that moves from gloomily eventful, sourly shrill, to atmospheric- yet angularly darting. This is the seventh CD release of Granberg’s work, on the always worthy Another Timbre.

For this release/ composition, we have eight players involved- there’s Granberg on prepared piano. He’s joined by the Swedish group Skogen- which is here made up of Anna Lindal & Angharad Davies – violin, Leo Svensson Sander – cello, Erik Carlsson – percussion, John Eriksson – vibraphone, Henrik Olsson - percussion, objects Petter Wästberg - contact microphones, mixing board & d’incise - electronics, objects. The piece was recorded in 2017, at the Atlantis Stockholm.

As with all of the work I’ve heard from Granberg- the pace, layout & flow of this composition is often very sparse, skeletal & pared back. Yet oddly though-out there’s an almost subtle pulsing groove to the whole thing, which rather makes it stand out from his other work.  The piece opens with a blend of stuck clunking piano notation, light rhythmic neck saws, vibraphone darts & subtle percussive detail- giving one the feel of a gloomy- yet- lightly scuttling vibe- as if something or some is been stalked by a playful killer. As the track progresses Granberg keeps both the feel frightful urgency & mood very much alive, as the instrumental textures & tones are skilful shifted & moved like the unwinding, and winding of a piece of different fibered rope.

At times things become shrill & sour, at others lulling, darting & creepily detailed. Going onto angularly dramatic, with at times an almost ethnic rhythmic feel in it’s twitching, darting, and snapping percussive detail. The piece comes in at just over the fifty six minute mark, and throughout this time Granberg keeps you spell-bound and enchanted by the work- as his compositional layers shift back and forth, like the moving of a subdued-yet- carefully detailed sonic puzzle box.

It’s fair to say that Magnus Granberg has become one of my favourite composers on Another Timber, as each new work finds him presenting his distinctively sparse-yet-micro detailed style in a subtly different manner- and Nun, es wird nicht weit mehr gehn is no exception, who would have thought a subtly fleetting groove could work so well in a often creepy & unsettling modern composition framework?

Roger Batty, Musique Machine