Since the death in 1985 of his former teacher Hilding Rosenberg, Ingvar Lidhohm (b. 1921) has been the dominant figure amongst Swedish composers, although by no means as radically minded as Bengt Hambraeus or Arne Mellnas. Lidholm became particularly well-known to an international audience in the early 1980s through his highly effective and emotive orchestral work Kontakion (1978), which is based on an Orthodox hymn tune. Something of the semi-religious character as well as the internal processes of Kontakion surface in his first full-length stage opera, A Dream Play, which makes use of, amongst other things an old medieval hymm (Rex caeli, domine maris) and two motets for unaccompanied chorus from the early 1980s. As with his earlier chamber opera, Hollandarn, the text has been derived from Strindberg, whose writings have inspired Lidholm throughout his career.
The first thing that strikes one about this new opera, after the solemn, opening brass chords, is the glorious writing for the chorus, which must rank as amongst the finest committed to an opera this century. During the course of A Dream Play the chorus play an unusually full and vital part, reflected not least in three protracted unaccompanied passages of truly symphonic grandeur, wonderfully effective if carried off (as in this performance) but which must be very difficult to integrate within the whole on the stage.
The style of Lidholm's music in this work is a little hard to place: somewhere between Hindemith, Berg and the Aulis Sallinen of The King goes forth to France will give a very general indication of its nature. In cutting over half of the original play, the composer has largely freed his opera from the crushing deadweight of Strindberg's symbolism and in order to counterpoint the complex and at times absurd plot (which at its most elementary level concerns the investigations of the Daughter of the god, Indra, into why Mankind complains so much) Lidholm resorted to a superficially simple tonal idiom. For much of its length the music is beautiful, yet beneath its dream-like exterior, darker, nightmarish forces lurk, which emerge in both the Foulstrand and Fairhaven scenes in Act 2. One advantage of tonality in such a score is to keep the harmonic motion constant, so that A Dream Play avoids the stasis that mars Erik Bergman's equally fantastical The Singing Tree (5193).
Caprice's recording is a model of clarity, with all the many subtle nuances of this score preserved naturally. The performance is extremely fine invidious as it is to pick out individuals from such an excellent team, Hillevi Martinpelto as Indra's daughter and Hakan Hagegard as the long-suffering Officer are splendid.'