In his Kongsgaard Variations (2006), Swedish composer Anders Hillborg takes the Arietta-theme from Beethoven's last piano-sonata, No. 32 in C minor Op. 111 as the basis for an evocative 16-minute string quartet.

In his Kongsgaard Variations (2006), Swedish composer Anders Hillborg takes the Arietta theme from Beethoven's last piano-sonata, No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111 as the basis for an evocative 16-minute string quartet. Beethoven's sublime music drifts strangely through the centuries and is warped, vaporised, and refashioned as if, in the words of Hillborg, the Arietta "is dreaming yet another variation on itself."

Commissioned by Stockholm Chamber Brass in 1998, Anders Hilllborg's Brass Quintet is imbued with energy. Ethereal, floating textures materialise between pulse-driven, hocketing sections, and the 8-minute work fades out in a lyrical chorale.

Commissioned by Stockholm Chamber Brass in 1998, Anders Hilllborg's Brass Quintet is imbued with energy. Ethereal, floating textures materialise between pulse-driven, hocketing sections, and the 8-minute work fades out in a lyrical chorale.

The music of Anders Hillborg's virtuosic Tampere Raw for clarinet and piano alternates between two vividly different characters: one slowly flowing texture, composed completely intuitively, and one fast, fiercely rhythmical and pulsative texture, where the tone material for the most part is generated from permutations of prime-number series.

Hillborg's first violin concerto, composed in the early nineties, is a pivotal work in his oeuvre. Composed in the wake of his highly experimental Clang & Fury and Celestial Mechanics---both of which employ complex and unconventional tuning systems---the concerto displays a more pragmatic approach, though the drama it sets up is far from conventional, with a very fluid soloist-orchestra relationship. Esteemed conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, who has recorded the concerto in 2002, has described it as one Hillborg's best pieces.

Inspired by the dangerous yet alluring sirens in Homer's Odyssey, Anders Hillborg's Sirens is his largest and most ambitious work to date---an evocative 30-minute score in which the sirens (two soprano soloists and a large choir) attempt with increasing desperation to manipulate Ulysses.

Despite its short duration, The Peacock Moment holds a central place in Anders Hillborg's worklist. Much of material in this frenetic 1-minute work for clarinet and piano derive from a prime-number series - a common feature in his subsequent work.