"Mozart - Sinding, You & Me" was written for Oslo Sinfonietta in 2006, for their concert at Oslo Chamber Music Festival. The piece is based on works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) and Christian Sinding (1856 - 1941), respectively "Divertimento in D, KV 136 and "Adagio i H" by Mozart, and "Frühlingsrauschen", "Romance" op. 30 and "Serenade" by Sinding. It takes it`s general outline from the anniversary of both Mozart and Sinding.
But as a work of art, the main idea and exploration for me was distance; both the distances from me to them, but also the distance between Mozart and Sinding. Here I am talking about timespan, but also music as a part of history - making their music so differently connected to society. So differently owned and perceived.

Music in general could of course sometimes be felt "near" or sometimes "distant". In the case of Mozart, I always have been reminded by others that he is so universal and near through the beauty of his musical spirit. Sometimes Mozart suddenly comes closer, but most of the time his music is so far away from me, so hard to reach, so hard to penetrate. This comes out in different levels: one could say that he is distant in historical terms, but at the same time he is near because of his central position in european musical tradition. Futher on one could ask if this arise from our understanding of him. In that case he might be much more distant than we like to imagine.    

When it comes to Sinding, he is also more or less quite distant to me. Actually at least as much, if I could use a word like that, distant as Mozart. But Sinding has never been iconized as Mozart. At the contrary, he has been very little played in Norway because of some more or less manipulated uttaleleser during the first years of the second world war. Personally I`ve also have had a lot of problems listening to his music, mainly because of his "over-romantic" sound, very ´cantabile` and cheechy...

So working with this as an main idea, which also is immanent in working with others material, the play of distance avoke; to both point out distances in the way I listen and as a result of that treat their material, and how we as listeners `hear` the piece.