Niels Marthinsen's Symphony No. 2 - Snapshot Symphony (2009). 1st movement Fiesta Mexicana: fortissimo accelerando (ca. 6 minutes) 2nd movement Arabian Nights: adagio intensivo e furioso (ca. 11 minutes) 3rd movement Great Fireworks in China: giocoso esplosivo e marcatissimo (ca. 8 minutes) Programme note I’ve never been to Mexico and Arabia or to China. But I love the way those countries sound in Hollywood movies and inpop culture generally: When Clint Eastwood rides south of the border when Disney’s Alladin or Mulan takes me far east when arabic pop music roars past me out of the open windows of a car... and bull fighter music and the sound of acrobatic beat-em-up’s in John Woo’s Hong Kong karate movies – and so on: powerful images splashed all over my eye balls and ear drums. My recollections of this ethnic-pop-film-music has turned itself into a symphony. And I don’t even have to just remember what I have heard: A few internet clicks gives me access to incredible sound libraries containing live-and-kicking ethnic music from my three favorite countries just waiting to be put together in new combinations and energize my personal imagery. The symphony is like a huge slide show – musical snapshots from my travels in the western pop culture versions of three exotic locations: Mexico Arabia and China – original and popular melodies welded together by my personal musical language and associations. I use all the effects of modern pling-plong-music plus a few of my own inventions to create a spectacular contemporary orchestral sound sporting a bee hive of melodies from either East or West played simultaneously in different keys and differents tempos at once while kept firmly in place by
