Gefle Dagblad 2022-12-14
By: KRISTIAN EKENBERG
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On stage
GD GD GD GD GD
Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling
Where: Gävle Concert Hall
When: December 12
Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling grew up together. They were born at BB in Sundsvall only a few days apart in 1970, then during their childhood and youth they sang together at Lucia and in choirs. But as with so many childhood friendships, life goes in different directions. There doesn’t have to be disagreement at the bottom, you just develop in different directions, maybe move to different places and meet new people.
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From the song Precis som i sagorna (Just like in fairy tales), when they sing about drifting apart, to talking about Christmas, in the small talk between songs, as a time to reconnect with people who have been important in one’s life.
In addition to having a common history, and great experience of singing with each other, they have something inherent in their voices that makes them intertwine beautifully. In several of the songs they sing together, but they also have solo numbers.
Christmas concerts are a difficult genre, so full of the old and worn, the expectations from the audience, the slightly stuffed Christmas table. But Helen Sjöholm and Anna Stadling find a perfect balance between Christmas feeling and the wintry melancholic, and they have had a great sense of song selection and have been helped by some of Sweden’s professional lyricists to translate English texts into Swedish, such as in Den bleka vinter (The pale winter) and Vintersång (Winter song). The Swedish language is part of the secret to why these songs go straight to the heart.
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Making something artistically interesting out of Christmas music isn’t the easiest thing either, but they have a fantastic band behind them (among other things with the Gävle son Nisse Törnqvist on percussion) who make even O helga natt (O holy night) sound like a new (…) favorite in the concert together with Koppången, which Sjöholm sings in a version that catches the nerves in the strings. Then one of the extra numbers, which is not on the album, is actually one of the evening’s finest moments: Jul i Göteborg (Christmas time in Gothenburg), which Anna Stadling sang solo before.
The fifth in the rating should be seen in the context of the Christmas concert in particular. I don’t usually waste top marks, but among Christmas concerts I find it hard to see that anyone can do it better than Sjöholm and Stadling with band does. Don’t let this collaboration stop at a Christmas album – we want to hear more from you together!
(The entire review is not reproduced for copyright reasons)