Photo & © Anders Forngren
Västmanlands Läns Tidning 151127
By: SOPHIA SINCLAIR
It’s been 13 years since Helen Sjöholm and Anders Widmark released the album “Genom varje andetag”. Now they set off on tour “Midvinter” around Sweden – a musical experience that contains both intimacy and warmth.
The great hall of Västerås Concert House is so quiet and atmospheric that it almost feels devout when Helen Sjöholm and Anders Widmark together start off the concert with the song “Jag har bara ögonblick”.
It’s a reasonable way to launch “Midvinter”, as the song along with the subsequent number “Fastän du sover” are part of Sjöholms and Widmark’s joint album “Genom varje andetag”.
However tonight’s concert is no genuine nostalgia trip but goes as its name indicates in winter mode where well-known classics like “Ring Them Bells” and “Ave Maria” figure together with Christmas carols fragrant of jazz as well as the duo’s newly released single, “Jag vill följa med”. Choices a bit sprawling, perhaps, but the consistently high quality found only in really experienced musicians makes it pass almost unnoticed.
And it’s precisely both Helen Sjöholm and Anders Widmark’s long experience in the business that makes it extra impressive that two such big names can be experienced as something else than in big musical productions and at lavish concert halls. “Midvinter” is invariably stylish and elegant, but above all totally unadorned. Sjöholm and Widmark serve themselves entirely to the audience in a frost-rimmed mix of intimacy and professionalism.