Photo: Eva Brandin
New album out 2025-05-23
Order CD at Bengans record store
The highly anticipated debut album from Klara Ahlersten and Harald Svensson, Mitt liv (My life). Featuring 14 intimate songs for voice and piano, the album brings together Harald’s evocative compositions with texts by renowned writers such as Emily Dickinson, Ebba Lindqvist, and Rainer Maria Rilke. It also includes songs by Klara Ahlersten, Victor Jara, Claudio Monteverdi, and Soledad Bravo, along with an anonymous 15th-century ballad.
Sung in Swedish, English, Spanish, and Italian, the album’s texts explore themes of everyday life, love, and the existential. Emily Dickinson’s Me from myself — to banish contemplates the struggle with the self, while Autumn, the album’s opening track, captures small moments from daily life. Music, set to Rilke’s words, is a layered tribute to music itself — and what lies beyond it.
A beautifully crafted album where poetry and music meet in a deeply personal, expressive space.
"Singer Klara Ahlersten and pianist/composer Harald Svensson are now releasing their debut album as a duo—an album of impressive breadth and diversity (…) Harald Svensson impresses with a resonant and convincing musical confidence and freedom. Together with Klara Ahlersten, he creates a musically organic whole. A duo of distinction. The vocals carry a truly unique character—a fragility and delicacy, but not weakness. An engaged intimacy."
– Bo Bjelvehammar - LIRA
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"Genre-defying (...) are Klara Ahlersten and Harald Svensson, who move in a borderland between art song and classical music, with touches of jazz-tinged piano. Svensson brings a fifty-year career as an improviser rooted in jazz. (…) Ahlersten’s voice is clear, bright, and somewhat youthful, and most of the album is lyrical, slightly melancholic, and elegiac. One can easily imagine church venues as fitting concert settings for the duo. Every detail is beautifully rendered.
– Sten Wistran - Kulturdelen
Photo: Eva Brandin
"Their chamber concert, performed in two sets, was warmly received by a large and attentively listening audience. The duo offers an intimate sound with a distinctive aesthetic, the kind of refined expression typically associated with chamber music festivals or sacred spaces. (…) In his accompaniment—and even more so in instrumental interludes—it became clear what a versatile pianist Harald Svensson is. Despite the generally structured form, some melodies were embellished with avant-garde elements, driving beats, and at times a sense of openness to improvisation.
An enriching performance by a fascinating duo!"
- Mats Hallgren
Photo: Donovan von Martens
Me from Myself to Banish is the second single from Klara Ahlersten & Harald Svensson’s upcoming album Mitt liv, to be released on May 23rd. The song portrays an inner conflict — the attempt to build an invulnerable wall against emotions and external influences, while the greatest threat proves to come from within, from the self.
The lyrics, written by Emily Dickinson, are an existential meditation on self-awareness, inner struggle, and the loss of self-control. The composition and piano performance are by Harald Svensson. Vocalist Klara Ahlersten moves skillfully and seamlessly between vocal styles, capturing the essence of the composition with virtuosic precision.
Eros Triumphans is the first single from Klara Ahlersten & Harald Svensson’s upcoming debut album Mitt liv, set for release on May 23. The song revolves around memories, carrying a sense of closure and reflection on what has been, while also hinting at a new beginning. The poem’s imagery, with the light of dawn and the darkness of night, reinforces the theme of time’s passage and transformation.
The music, composed by pianist and composer Harald Svensson, is set to a text by the Swedish theologian and poet Anita Nathorst. With Harald’s delicate melody and gentle accompaniment, Klara conveys the essence of the lyrics with a deep sensitivity to both melodic beauty and poetic depth.
Photo: Donovan von Martens
Klara Ahlersten & Harald Svensson formed their duo in 2023. They were immediately highly appreciated after their debut, receiving a warm reception from audiences. Not least for their close interplay, Klara's unique voice and almost sublime interpretation of text and music.
The repertoire primarily consists of poems set to music by Harald with a focus on female poets such as Emily Dickinson, Ebba Lindqvist, Anita Nathorst, Delmira Agustini and of songs composed by Klara.