P, C & C order room service (II): View from Öresundbron

Per was asked to write music for the opening of Öresundsbron, the bridge connecting Sweden and Denmark. The inauguration of the bridge was on Saturday, July 1, and the instrumental track “View From The Bridge”, written by Per with help from Clarence Öfwerman and Christoffer Lundquist, was performed at the conclusion of the ceremony. The opening ceremony was broadcasted live on SVT1 and TV4 and via satellite on SVT Europa.

Oresund or The Sound (Danish: Øresund, Swedish: Öresund) is the strait that separates the Danish island Zealand (Sjælland) from the south Swedish province Scania (Skåne). Its width is just 4 km at the narrowest point (between Helsingor, on Zealand, Denmark, and Helsinborg, Sweden).Oresund is one of the three Danish Straits that connect the Baltic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean (via Kattegat, Skagerrak and the North Sea) and is one of the busiest waterways in the world.

Construction began in 1995 and the last section was constructed on August 14, 1999. The Oresund Bridge has been inaugurated on July 1, 2000 by King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden and Queen Margrethe II of Denmark.

The bridge was opened for traffic later that day. Before the inauguration 79,871 runners competed in a half distance marathon (Broloppet, the Bridge Run) from Amager (in Denmark) to Skane (in Sweden) on June 12, 2000.

The bridge connects Sweden with Denmark, and includes a lower level for trains. The one-way toll for a car will cost 275 SEK while the train will cost between 70 and 140 SEK.

Per was in Malmö and was interviewed in Aftobladet and the Swedish TV. These are his words:

"It is more like a combination of Brian Wilson’s sling guitar and Ennio Morricone’s pomposity. It has been funny to try out in a new genre, but I am not interested in big productions in the future. Actually, I’m kind of glad when this is over. I am more of a rock’n’roll guy. We (Clarence, Christoffer and me) have worked on the composition on computers and I haven’t even heard it performed with real instruments yet"

Per himself has not been performing in the ceremony — the 8-minute musical piece has been performed by the Orchestra of Malmö Music Teather and Denmark Radio Pops Orchestra.

"View from the bridge" is the first non-Roxette work of the P,C&C Team (Per, Clarence and Christoffer) since The World According to Gessle. I think it is really amazing to see Per involved in new original challenges. Christoffer, for example, is now working in Brainpool's new rock opera.

LJdM

I did “View from the bridge” with Per Gessle and Christoffer Lundquist. It’s good, at least the demo is good. We didn’t like the result. We wrote it and made it as we wanted it to sound. But the Danish people changed it. Christoffer and I went down to Denmark for the rehearsals with the orchestra and were like “what’s this? We didn’t write this?”. Everything had been changed, it was still nice, but the arrangements were messed up. We had a meeting and called Per and told him “we don’t think you want to have your name on this”. They had added drums, we only had orchestra and percussion.

The conductor, he was British, didn’t want to speak to us, he never joined the meetings. We released their version in the end. It was kind of strange, it was the first time we had done something like that, so we didn’t know what to expect. But, of course, this doesn’t mean we don’t want to do this again. I actually think Per should record this one in the proper way, as we created it, and release it. We should put the demo somewhere.

Clarence Öfwerman