A fresh musical rendering of Nobel Prize Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry has recently been composed by Rolf Martinsson (photo to the right), Professor of Composition at Malmö Academy of Music, part of Lund University. Martinsson has chosen a series of Tagore poems entitled ”Garden of Devotion” to be performed by the chamber orchestra Musica Vitae from Växjö in the end of September 2014. The composition work, commissioned by the orchestra with support from the Swedish Arts Council, has resulted in five songs for a soprano soloist, Lisa Larsson, to be sung in English (based on Tagore’s own translation from Bengali).
The poems are carefully selected telling the story of the love between a man and a woman, where the woman is sure of her own feelings, but not as sure of the man’s feelings towards her. She begs the man to trust his emotions, not to keep his love to himself, not to elude her, and not to abandon her when she herself has proclaimed her great love of him.
The song cycle will be part of a concert programme with the theme Love and Life.

The concerts are given at Växjö Konserthus on Thursday 25 September 2014, at 19.00; at Palladium concert hall in Malmö on Friday 26 September at 19.00; at Lund University main auditorium (Universitetsaulan) on Saturday 27 September at 17.00; and finally at Vara Konserthus near Gothenburg on Sunday 28 September at 16.00.

More information.