Composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas: 'Music has no nationality'

The most recent achievement of Russian-Swedish composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas (b. 1969) is Dracula. This opera based on Bram Stoker's book of the same name premiered at Royal Opera Stockholm in October 2017. A 'colourful and highly atmospheric musical score', it included 'one of the most emotional scenes in the history of Swedish opera', wrote one critic.

Seven years earlier, Borisova-Ollas composed her successful clarinet concerto Golden Dances of the Pharaohs for Martin Fröst and the Swedish Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. This was described as 'a wondrous song from an ancient realm'.

Saturday, 13 January 2018, this concert will be performed at the NTRSaturdayMatinee, by the Residentie Orkest and Martin Fröst. In 2010, the Swedish clarinettist already signed for the Dutch premiere, together with the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. At the time, I spoke with Borisova-Ollas for the live TROS broadcast on Radio 4.

From Vladivostok to Moscow

You were born in Vladivostok in the easternmost part of Russia, near China and Korea. Yet you studied in Moscow, why so far away?

Russia is indeed a very large country. The Soviet education system was good, but centralised. If you did not live in the important cities of Moscow, Leningrad or Kiev, you had to go far away to study. I wanted to be a composer from an early age, but there was no composition teaching at the Vladivostok conservatory.

So when I was 13, my mother sent me to the Central Music School in Moscow, the junior section of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory. Fortunately, that same year they decided on an experiment: they let us, who were still quite young, study composition directly as a principal subject.

From Moscow to Malmö and London

After completing the conservatoire, why did you go on to study in Sweden and England?

I went to Sweden when I was twenty-two because I married a Swedish man. By then I had indeed completed my education, but I found the climate in Sweden totally different from what I was used to in Russia. I realised that to get to the bottom of that, I had to continue my education in my new homeland. After studying at the Malmö College of Music for several years, I took part in an exchange programme with the Royal College of Music in London. I was curious about how composition teaching works in different countries.

Conservatoire as a fluke

What were the differences?

I found the British system quite similar to the Soviet system. You start studying music at a young age and go to higher and higher education to eventually reach the conservatoire. One difference was that in England you had more opportunities to learn modern compositional styles; in my years in Russia, contemporary music was only just being discovered.

In Sweden, I could not find out exactly when and where music education actually started. Almost all my fellow students had only had private education. There were no schools or music gyms to prepare youngsters, so you had to depend on chance. If you were lucky with your first teacher, you might be able to enroll at the conservatory. The basics of music were often taught only then, much later than in Russia and Britain. Fortunately, this has all changed now; there are now more music schools in Sweden.

Dancing clarinettist Martin Fröst

You composed 'Golden Dances of the Pharaohs' in 2010. Was this your own idea, or a commission?

I've been thinking about doing something with ancient Egypt for a while now. I always have a list of about ten titles in my head. When Martin Fröst asked me to write a clarinet concerto for him, the theme of the pharaohs immediately came to mind again. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which commissioned it, also thought it was a great idea, so we decided to carry out my plan.

Why 'golden dancing', not just 'dancing'?

My idea was to create something with dance for Martin Fröst, who is not only a great clarinetist, but also moves beautifully while playing. Musing about his stage performance thought, I came across an art book about ancient Egypt. On the cover was the famous golden mask of pharaoh Tutankhamun. An iconic image: when we think of ancient Egypt, we think of gold, of mighty things.

Dance party at Tutankhamun's court

Curiously, however, we never think about sounds. We know almost everything about their daily customs, but not about the instruments the Egyptians used, how they danced or how they sang. The mask triggered my imagination. I tried to imagine a dance party in the pharaohs' palace. What could that have sounded like? With that thought in the back of my mind, I started composing.

At the beginning, we hear a voice on tape. Who is this and what text is he reciting? 

It is Martin Fröst himself, whose voice sounds in a kind of old....

..... timbre?

Yes, we edited the timbre of his voice electronically. So I refer to Herodotus, the father of historians, who travelled through Egypt in the 5th century BC. I quote a text from the book he wrote about it: 'In respect of Egypt I will now speak at length, for nowhere are there so many wonders, nor in all the world are there so many works to be seen of ineffable greatness.' I asked Martin to read these words and then we gave the recording an archaic touch.

Music has no nationality

Now that you are so deeply rooted in Swedish musical life, do you see yourself as a Russian or a Swedish composer?

I would prefer to think of myself and my music as cosmopolitan. Besides, what could be the nationality of music?

More info and tickets here.

Part of our conversation can be heard on YouTube.