Artist Detailed Info: Silfver

From the groups Website http://silfver.eu/:

Folk musicians Pelle Björnlert and Johan Hedin invite the baroque musicians Nora Roll and Sven Åberg to a musical feast. Both dancing and heartfelt small talk are on the cards.

Pelle’s personal and dance-like fiddle playing meets Sven’s dexterous fingers on the lute. Johan’s heartfelt nyckelharpa playing is united with the warm bass of Nora’s viola da gamba. The folk music’s rhythmic intensity is clothed in a rich and resonant costume.

Over time, baroque music and folk music – which in many respects share the same roots – have meandered forward along separate paths. Here, their paths cross once more in everything from solo to quartet. Many are the musicians who have provided tunes and inspiration.

In 1715 the Swedish soldier Gustaf Blidström notated many melodies during his imprisonment in the Sibyrien town Tobolsk. In 2010 Pelle Björnlert created a few tunes in freedom in the small southern Swedish village Vråka. They are separated by about three hundred years and four thousand kilometres. The distance in time and space is far, and yet somehow feels near…

Silfver now invites you to the feast!


Pelle Björnlert:

has devoted a large part of his life to reawakening the dormant but rich folk music tradition from southeast Sweden. His playing ideal is one that is dance-like, lively and rich in variation.

He made a name for himself early on, on the merits of a personal playing style with an infectious dance rhythm, and he has long been a role model for many fiddlers. More recently Pelle has begun composing his own tunes, most of them in traditional style, but occasionally with a more unusual twist.

Pelle plays standard violin as well as a violin with sympathetic strings; violino d’amore, an instrument modern in Sweden during the 1700s. He is a riksspelman and has moreover been awarded the gold Zornmärket.

Johan Hedin:

is a well-known nyckelharpa player through his way of handling the instrument. Johan grew up in a thriving folk music milieu in Småland, where he studied music with older masters of the tradition. The foundations of this schooling were partly an extended rhetoric and variation in the music, together with the demand that it should also be dance-like. His playing style has been formed hand in hand with a great interest in developing the nyckelharpa as an instrument.

Johan performs mainly in duo constellations – amongst others with singer and fret-instrumentalist Esbjörn Hazelius and organist Gunnar Idenstam – or as a member of the world music group Bazar Blå. Many of his concerts have been broadcast throughout Europe within the EBU cooperation.

The nyckelharpa is a Swedish folk music instrument that is played with a bow like a fiddle, has keys like a hurdy-gurdy, and sympathetic strings like a viola d’amore. It has been played since the Middle Ages, and the earliest known depiction of it is a stone carving in a church from around 1350.



Nora Roll: viola da gamba, is a Norwegian-Swedish baroque musician with Stockholm as her home ground. In 1998 Nora became Sweden’s first certified gamba player. Since then she has toured and performed in 26 countries in Europe, Asia, South America and USA. Nora also plays lirone, and through her deep passion for continuo playing she has become a highly sought-after accompanist in the Baroque world. Ensembles with whom she works are, amongst others, NAYA, Les Talens Lyriques, Concerto Copenhagen, Le Concert d’Astrée, The Harp Consort and Atalante. Back in Sweden, Nora is a permanent member of Göteborg Baroque.

Sven Åberg: mostly plays music from the 16th and 17th centuries on renaissance and baroque lutes, but has also played for example Swedish folk music, Argentinean tango and contemporary art music. He has alternated touring the world with Drottningholms Barockensemble with playing in smaller groups such as Corde and Musica Humana, as well as teaching lute and chamber music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He gladly uses the sound world of the historical lutes in unconventional contexts, often featuring improvisation. As a folk musician he has amongst other things worked with flautist Göran Månsson under the name Månsson & Åberg.

← Go Back