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Programme Note

HEDDA GABLER SUITE (1993). For viola, harp and piano.
The Suite with its 17 short movements and a duration of aroun 16 minutes, is almost identical with all the music I composed for the BBC production of Henrik Ibsens´s famous play “Hedda Gabler”. For the production the director Deborah Warner changed the location from Bergen, Norway to Dublin – two cities with many things in common, both in size and atmosphere.
All the movements are played attacca, as one movement, and the reason that I accepted this incidental music to be performed as a concert piece is that it has a unity – decided by Deborah Warner and me – always following the character of Hedda. In Fiona Shaw´s´ interpretation Hedda Gabler is just as ruthless as Ibsen created her – but also deeply felt, understood and shown as a victim of the suppressed role of women in the Victorian age.
Therefore the associations to the salon music of the era are coloured with a strong expressionistic expression – the music being entirely created from the inner universe of the main character Hedda.

The titles of the 17 short movements are:

1. Haunted
2. Exposed
3. Deceived
4. In Void
5. Hunter (Tour de force)
6. Memory
7. Memory II
8. “Sub rosa”
9. Procession
10. Lion and Lamb
11. Hunter II
12. Anticipation
13. Personel Souvenir
14. Strange Lullaby
15. Anticipation II (Waltz – Intermezzo)
16. Mask of Chopin (Nocturne in F Major)
17. The Red Mask of Death



Per Nørgård (1993)