Borisova-Ollas: Symphony No. 2, für Orchester

How does the mechanism which controls our ability to remember the past work?

My own solution to this mystery is a combination of three keywords: time, pulse, and memory.

In fact, we cannot remember events as if they were lined up as a chain of beautiful pearls from a perfectly neat necklace. Instead, we remember short sections of conversations, colors, still and moving images. We remember voices, melodies, and in more complicated contexts also texts, numbers, music scores, and drawings. Of course, all of that varies from one person to another depending very much on what sort of personalities we have, our occupations and our age range.

One can also experience the memory process as a walk in a labyrinth. I imagine that labyrinth as a giant interior of a church tower's clockwork. We take one step to the right, one step to the left while the huge machinery ticks, its wheels rattling and scratching. The clock hits a quarter of an hour, two quarters, three quarters … then the final chord arrives!

Time always has a pulse, and therefore it is closely related to the music. The heart beats faster or slower while the short episodes of the silent movie keep rolling back and forth. We remember, we breathe, we exist.

Symphony No. 2 “Labyrinths of Time” was written between 2015 and 2016. It was commissioned by Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Victoria Borisova-Ollas