När det Var Traktorkonsert i Brösarp

On a peaceful summer evening in 2002 in the small village of Brösarp in Scania, southern Sweden, we filmed the performance of Sven-Åke Johansson's work Konzert für 12 Traktoren, conducted by the composer. Twelve two- and three-cylinder tractors from the 1950s and 60s are positioned in a semi-circle at a fruit plantation and the sounds of bells ringing can be heard. Before an enthusiastic audience of 1,000, the old tractors start their engines and press the gas pedals while idling. They race, purr, play, sing in the sunset. This landscape in Brösarp is a cultural landscape. With plow, horse, and tractor, it has been created by people. The efforts of generations can be read therein. A cultural landscape is a narrative of the work of people, of their villages and material conditions. Forty and fifty years old, the tractors in Johansson's work are already stories in themselves, and the audience gazes on this evening over a landscape that will soon be a sparsely populated area where not a tractor plows and not a cow grazes. One could thus experience the tractor concert as requiem and lament for a region on its way to disappearing. The tractors sing of a time that has escaped. But if there is no memory, then there is no future. As such, the Konzert für 12 Traktoren is also a work as laudation of work. By the way: if you project a Nuffield 342 faster than light, your vision goes black.
EBBE GILBE (Director)

watch projects: Konzert für 12 Traktoren

discography: (Picture Disc) Konzert für 12 Traktoren 
Kompositionen  
När Det Var Traktorkonsert I Brösarp (DVD)