Title:	Symphony No. 1 "The Triumph of Heaven"
Duration:	30`
Year of composition:	2001
First performance:	Malmö Symphony Orchestra / Dmitry Liss
	April 24 2003, Malmö Concert Hall
Publisher:	Universal Edition

The subtitle of this Symphony, The Triumph of Heaven, comes from an early (1907) painting of the famous Russian artist Kazimir Malevich. The subject of the painting is a very peaceful, even idyllic. All the souls are gathered together in Heaven under the protecting wings of what seems to be the Holy Ghost. Meanwhile the intensive yellow colour creates a totally different atmosphere. For me it has always been a symbol of a hidden danger. Probably because of the poem that Osip Mandelstam wrote around the same time (1917). It says: "...yellowness of heaven is alarming". The Symphony starts with this vision of an alarming yellow sky hanging upon St. Petersburg in the beginning of the XXth century. The century which has given rise to a countless amount of a horrible tragedies and global disasters instead of fulfilling all the bright expectations of humanity.

The conflict between the mechanical, indifferent and evil "spirit of time" and the desperate attempts of the "human soul" to stay alive under impossible circumstances became the main subject of the first part of the Symphony.

The second part, with it`s atmosphere of silent mourning, is influenced by the following passage from The Book of Ezekiel: "...he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley: it was full of bones."

The third part is meant to bring the listener back into our chaotic and unpredictable century which has already made a dramatic turn from the greatest expectations to a cruel reality of everlasting conflicts. A different version of the "second subject" from the first part - a melody played by trumpets - reminds us that the "human soul" is still striving towards the perfect, unknown world which we often imagine as "Heaven".