In his biography of Gösta Nystroem writes Anders Edling about the doubt he felt about his relevance as a composer after the second world war. ”It is not we who will bring the word for this, but a younger generation, who will laugh at what we have done.”, wrote Nystroem in a gloomy letter.
But that was not the case. Alice Tegnér had his portrait on his piano and he is loved by Hugo Alfvén, but in the 50’s, he also came to be admired by the young radicals in and around the Oddity. Of such as Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Bo Wallner and Eric Ericson, who all expressed their affinity with him. When the Moderna museet opened in 1958, it was to a fanfare of just Nystroem.
the 50’s and 60’s, became also most of his happiest years both privately and as a composer. So happy that when Gerard Bonnier urged him to write his memoirs, he chose the title: ”All I remember is the desire and the light.” To those who also suffer from this eminence was the pianist Käbi Laretei, who asked him to compose a piano concerto for himself. A ”Concerto ricercante” whose first performance in 1960 was broadcasted live in television.
to compose for keyboard, and ”ricercante” means the applicant. That was actually a trial, is also expressed in its motto of Flaubert: ”Preserve me, God, the sea is so wide and my boat so small!” When this jewel to the piano concerto, for it is the really, Thursday was performed by Anna Christensson and Göteborgssymfoniker under the leadership of Ha-na Chang was framed by the highest musical calibre – Mozart’s overture to ”the marriage of Figaro” and Beethoven’s ”Eroica”. Something that only reinforced its willingness to accept all the emotional intensity and flowing espri as was most of his mark.
The sovereign Anna Christensson, who also recorded the piece on the disc, frilade in a closest from the way its hammering dissonant passages before the horizon open with its savage beauty. She got one to come extremely close to the Gösta Nystroem, who one day forced his music in the hard work. And that other day to let the flow lying on the stomach on a rock at the sea.
