The flute quartet 40f is driven by a desire to reach out to its audience, through communicative concerts and concert presentations. The quartet navigates through a peculiar and personal soundscape, with the ambition to both expand the role of the flute in the music of our time, and expand the repertoire for flute quartet. 40f gave their first concert in 2008, and since then has played extensively on Swedish stages, for example at Stockholm’s Konserthus series “New Friday”. Abroad, they have been seen and heard at the Musikverein in Vienna, the Swedish Institute in Paris, at the music festival Specs On in Berlin, and on tour in Norwegian fjord landscapes. 40f has commissioned and premiered music by some of our most prominent Swedish and Nordic composers: Madeleine Isaksson, Magnus Bunnskog, Malin Bång, Anders Jormin, Lotta Wennäkoski, Lisa Nordström and Ida Lundén to name a few. For the very youngest audience, 40f has played the musical fairy tale Together by Andrea Tarrodi and Svante Grogarn. They have also done their own version of Steve Reich’s contemporary string quartet classic Different Trains.

40f consists of Ann Elkjär, Jill Widén, Åsa Karlberg, and Anna Svensdotter

Peter Gustavsson & 40F | Notes on light – musical painting

Program 

Kaija Saariaho – Laconisme de l’aile [1982] in a version for four flutes

Lotta Wennäkoski – Glimt, skymt [2018]

About the concert

To Kalv, 40f brings two completely new works, and two dear “old” friends. In Rosali Grankull’s Signalövningar för ringar och människor, the composer has sculpted a work that revolves around sound, movement and collective listening as resistance to human destructiveness. The piece was first performed in January 2023, and here it is played both on flutes and large steel rings that hang from the ceiling.  

Johan Svensson’s work for 40f has been given the title slow motion and takes its starting point in eight custom-built automatic flutes. The draft can be set very precisely by stepper motors and the air flow into the flutes is controlled by small fans with adjustable speeds. Together, the mechanical and the human-controlled instruments create a dense web of slowly developing sounds where interference patterns appear in different guises.  

In Magnus Bunnskog’s Herztier’s Wiegenlied, which was originally written for 4 recorders, the literary plays a large role. In sections, fragments from Herta Müller’s novel The Land of Green Plums are presented paired with excerpts from the Swedish hymn-book.  

Titeln på Malin Bångs pebbles and eternal thirst kommer från en text av en norsk låtskrivare som beskriver jordens bräcklighet. Med mikrofoner placerade inuti instrumenten eftersträvar Bång en känsla av närhet till varje ljud, och därigenom av mänsklig närvaro. 

Program 

Rosali Grankull – Signalövningar för ringar och människor [2023]

Johan Svensson – Slow motion [2023], uruppförande

Magnus Bunnskog – Herztiers Wiegenlied [2011/2020]

Malin Bång – pebbles and eternal thirst [2018]

A sound walk in the Kalv forest | 40F and Non-Piano Ensemble

About the sound walk 

According to tradition, we gather at the parish home and then head into Kalv’s forests. We walk in stillness and silence. At various places on our journey, we listen to nature’s own sounds, at others our festival ensembles 40F and Non-Piano Ensemble will articulate the sound.