Nattvittje is my first string quartet. It was written for and recorded by Sirius Quartet.
Composed 2011. Cover photo by Niklas Alexandersson.
Sirius Quartet:
Violins: Fung Chern Hwei, Gregor Huebner
Viola: Gregor Huebner
Cello: Jeremy Harman
Mikael on Nattvittje:
Nattvittje is a fabricated, Swedish word meant to mean “checking the fishing nets at night”. The moment I am interested in is when you, at sea in a tiny boat, reach your hand into the black midnight water and see it disappear.
The water’s surface does a broken mirror dance and you feel the cold of the ocean gripping your wrists, holding them down. You are in fact reaching into another realm, trusting that you have some sense of it and hoping that – just like the last time – nothing will happen.