Chamber music & Baltic Seas with Stina Ekblad

Welcome to an enjoyable afternoon at the Finnish Institute when Stina Ekblad, together with musicians from the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, offers music by Vissarion Shebalin and a poetry reading by Tomas Tranströmer’s Östersjöar (Baltic seas).

The long form poem Baltic Seas (published in 1974) by Tomas Tranströmer is divided into six parts and is set mainly in the Stockholm archipelago, with excursions to Gotland and the Baltics. It is a complex and personally colored story about the Baltic Sea, in which Tranströmer explores themes such as borders between present and past, East and West, and between the living and the dead.

Shebalin’s Quartet, known as “the Slavic”, is a work filled with emotional depth. Composed during World War II, it carries a sense of struggle and resistance. With its five movements, the quartet takes us on a journey through dramatic climaxes and dark tones.