Beneath Winter Light

Common threads between art forms are woven into the creative process of exploring and expressing our shared experiences, emotions, and uncertainties. On her debut Navona Records release, BENEATH WINTER LIGHT, composer Heidi Jacob finds inspiration in film and poetry, as well as in music from past centuries, illustrating her faculty of expanding on timeless themes within modern compositional settings.

Inspired by subjects on the nature of existence, divinity, and love in Ingmar Bergman’s film Winter Light (1962), Jacob’s work for violin and piano, Winter Light, uses a combination of minimalist and 12-tone techniques to create an often mysterious and ominous interaction between the deliberate remarks of the piano and the fluid patterns of the violin. Regard á Schubert: a Fantasy Impromptu, incited by Franz Schubert’s Impromptu in C Minor, Op. 90, explores the idea of context, placing the initial motivic cell in various harmonic settings from Classical to 21st-century musical styles, while Fantasy surveys contrasts in texture, virtuoso gesture, and lyricism stemming from melodic elements in the opening material. The electroacoustic piece Salome Revisited uses reprocessed themes and spoken texts from Strauss’ Salome (1905) to build a cerebral and tense atmosphere that reflects the dark imagery in the opera.