Asheim: Høgsongen / Tchaikovsky: Serenade

A string orchestra is a body, the most sensual body of sound that exists. The movement of the arms sketches the sound, caresses it out.

The sound comes into being through contact, through skin contact, I would almost say. The bow hairs are an extension of the skin. At the friction point where the sound is created, it happens with all possible degrees of sensitivity, suppleness, touch, emotion; likewise with the potential for ruthlessness, brutality. The bow and the string are mutually in search of the perfect match, hardly know any longer which of them is the one or the other, as they meld into a common vibration.

In the border areas of the perfect stroke, there is the much too light, the hesitant, and the much too heavy, the insistent. This is a stringed instrument as well. Some several thousand years ago a text came into being, pieced together from a number of sources. Some were in use as nuptial poetry, some were known through oral tradition, and some of the text was composed.

There are those who say it originated with King Solomon; others simply call it the Song of Songs. No matter what, it is a magnificent celebration of love and eroticism.