The composer Klas Torstensson has lived and worked most of his adult life in the Netherlands, but his music crosses borders – in all respects. Despite the abstract nature of his music, sometimes there is a role for nature impressions from his native Sweden (including the North Pole region). In his outspoken modernist (often targeted as “noisy”) early works, he followed in the footsteps of Edgar Varèse and Iannis Xenakis. From the time when he wrote the opera The Expedition (1994-1999) and onwards, however, he enriched his original modernist approach with sounds, colors and even melody types from the classical symphonic tradition, which he uses dramatically and sometimes in shocking contrast with each other.