Four chapters across generations: 'Danish Resonances' sets accordion works by Hans Abrahamsen, Niels Rosing-Schow and Per Norgard against four newly commissioned world premieres by Anders Skibsted, Loic Destremau, Matias Vestergard and Gustav Bjerre. Accordionist Jose Valente threads them into a single, unfolding journey that moves by turns lyrical, virtuosic, introspective and expansive, revealing the full expressive range of the classical accordion.

Admired by Beethoven, Friedrich Kuhlau (1786-1832) made the four-hand piano genre his own. From the buoyant early Sonata in F major, Op. 8b, to the Beethovenian struggle of the late Allegro pathetique, Op. 123, this is melodically rich music, formally adventurous, and by turns convivial and dramatic. Marie-Luise Bodendorff and Xenia Kandel Frederiksen present the complete works, including several world premiere recordings, which together form a cornerstone of the Danish four-hand piano repertoire.

The Danish String Quartet's love of traditional Scandinavian folk music is almost as well known as the Quartet's performances of the classical repertoire. The album "Wood Works," presents four favorite tunes from Nordic folk history, including a 400 year old fragment from Fano, also heard within a movie seen by over 50,000 viewings. - Dacapo, (translated from Danish)

Kronborg is Denmark's most famous castle - the 'Elsinore' of Shakespeare - and within it's walls, sweet music. Kings Christian III, Frederik II and Christian IV harvested the bounty of Europe's musical wealth and crowned their lavish courts with song. In this majestic 8-CD set by Bo Holten and Musica Ficta are lute songs by Dowland, motets of Schutz, and world-premiere recordings of works by Palestrina, de Wert and Vecchi. These are no longer only echoes of a prosperous age, but now Denmark's golden musical past, regained anew. During its residency at Kronborg in 2021–2024, Musica Ficta presented this repertoire in a concert series in the castle’s Ballroom; the recordings gathered here were made separately, in dedicated sessions. Musica Ficta focused on works from the castle’s heyday, when there was a prosperous musical life there. This release marks a comprehensive celebration of 100 years of Danish musical life at Kronborg, Copenhagen and beyond, featuring music by: Heinrich Schütz (1585–1672) · John Dowland (1563–1626) · Hans Nielsen (c. 1580–1626) · Truid Aagesen (fl. 1593–1625) · Mogens Pedersøn (c. 1583–1623) · Hans Brachrogge (c. 1590–c. 1638) · Luca Marenzio (1553–1599) · John Bennet (c. 1575–1614) · Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623) · John Wilbye (1574–1638) · Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562–1621) · Johann Grabbe (1585–1655) · Mattheus le Maistre (c. 1505–1577) · Pierre Sandrin (c. 1490–after 1561) · Giaches de Wert (1535–1596) · Josquin Baston (c. 1515–c. 1576) · Jan Tollius (c. 1550–c. 1620) · Gregorius Trehou (c. 1540–1619) · Jacques Arcadelt (1507–1568) · Melchior Borchgrevinck (c. 1570–1632) · Nicolas Gistou (d. 1609) · Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) · Leone Leoni (c. 1560–1627) · Agostino Agresta (fl. 1600–1617) · Girolamo Casati (c. 1590–after 1657) · Simone Molinaro (c. 1570–1636) · Marsilio Santini (fl. c. 1600) · Curtio Valcampi (fl. 1600–1610) · Ruggiero Giovannelli (c. 1560–1625) · Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525–1594) · Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554–1612) · Antonio Mortaro (c. 1575–c. 1620) · Giovanni Croce (1557–1609) · Orazio Vecchi (1550–1605) · Leonhard Lechner (c. 1553–1606) · Guillaume Costeley (c. 1530–1606) · Vincenzo Ruffo (c. 1508–1587) · Gregor Lange (c. 1540–1587) · Arnold de Fine (c. 1530–1586) · Jørgen Presten (d. 1553) · Severin Tham (fl. c. 1540–1560) · Andreas Meier (fl. 1559)

For over four decades, Mogens Christensen (b. 1955) has crafted a unique musical world where the fluidity of dreams meets an aphoristic, crystalline concision. His works often draw on tangible inspirations - natural phenomena, Nordic myths, or literary echoes - guiding the listener through landscapes of intense atmospheric depth. From the 'friendly apparitions' of "Nordic Summer Ghosts" to the subterranean rivers of the monumental "Flumina mortis," this release showcases a composer who perfectly balances Arcadian poetry with a modern, functional clarity.

Composer Niels Ronsholdt's (b. 1978) solo project Aftermath journeys the American highway, observing cities and landscapes in decay, and reflecting on a fractured modern society. The classic road -trip dream of freedom fades into bewildered loneliness and remorse, yet fragile hopes of spring and new generations glimmer. This exclusive vinyl edition includes a free mp3 download of the full album (14 tracks in total).

Friedrich Kuhlau Was the Most Cosmopolitan Personality in Danish Music at the Beginning of the 19th Century. A Creative, Forward-Looking and Extremely Productive Composer, He Rarely Let His Pen Lie Idle. The Two Piano Quartets Recorded on This CD By the Young Copenhagen Piano Quartet Are Major Works from the Composer's Most Artistically Fertile Decade, Besides Testifying to Kuhlau's Own Brilliance As a Pianist.

This CD is a testimony of the extraordinary meeting between two strong artistic personalities. Danish mezzo-soprano Helene Gjerris explores six decades of vocal music by Per Nørgård (b. 1932) in new instrumentations; music which reaches the darkest corners of the human mind, loaded with intense poetry by Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Rimbaud and Pär Lagerkvist.

Ribe Cathedral, in the Southwest of Denmark, is one of the few places in the world where the earliest Lutheran church music practice can be reconstructed. Thanks to the Danish hymn collector Hans Thomissøn (1532-73), music director at Ribe Cathedral School around 1560, a clearly shaped liturgy was equipped with the relevant music. In exemplary manner this recording reflects the elements that made up an early Lutheran feast-day service in Denmark, including a fashionable Mass cycle by the Flemish master Jacobus Clemens non Papa. This release is just in time for the 500th anniversary of Europe’s Reformation. Musica Ficta, established in 1996, specializes in early music, particularly medieval and renaissance music.

These Goldberg Variations present new perspectives on a well-known score. Danish composer Peter Navarro-Alonso's composition is a note-by-note reinvention of the original Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach. Thus Alpha's innovative performance adds no additional notes in comparison to the original. It is merely through the very creative and extreme orchestration that the new composition gains it's own life. "The combination of recorder, saxophone and percussion is clearly not very well suited to a baroque-style reorchestration," claims Peter Navarro-Alonso, responsible for this arrangement tailor made for the members of Alpha. "But the richness in that combination lies in it's enormous diversity in timbre and dynamics." Alpha is a unique Danish ensemble, founded by Bolette Roed, Peter Navarro-Alonso, and David Hildebrandt, who all graduated from the soloist class at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen. As early as 2003, they were the first to explore this instrument combination, attracted by it's many possibilities. Alpha was an immediate success, and have been prize-winners at contests and festivals all over Europe.

A computer is connected to a massive pipe organ and robot musicians take control for the next 60 minutes – without human intervention. California-born composer Wayne Siegel (b. 1953) is a pioneer of computer-based music. In his work Celebration, the four manuals of the Hallgrímskirkja pipe organ in Reykjavík are controlled by four virtual musicians, all of them eager to express themselves individually but also programmed to perform together. Icelandic hymns and live-data from a weather satellite are interpreted by the virtual musicians playing the pipe organ, embedding human culture and the climate of our planet in everything they say. Wayne Siegel is a composer, professor of electronic music and director of DIEM (the Danish Institute for Electronic Music) in Aarhus. Siegel was born in Los Angeles and came to Denmark in 1974 to study composition with Per Norgard. Since then Siegel has lived in Denmark, where from the beginning of the 1980s he has pioneered the development of electronic music and computer-based composition.

" This CD presents five world premiere recordings of acoustic and electronic works by the Danish composer Rune Glerup (b. 1981). Instead of offering a narrative flow of music, Glerup uniquely allows the listener to move around among independent three-dimensional blocks of sound with powerful energy fields between them."

The idea of building great music from modest or fragmentary means has characterized the work of Nordic composers for generations. In Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen’s music, that idea finds a particularly exquisite and absolutely contemporary expression. In Toccata the music glances towards a filmic chase-down, whereas Nielsen in Ophelia Dances claims to ‘hear the dancing’ of that fragile character from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The album concludes with Nielsen’s single-movement symphony, Symphony No. 3, which sets in motion a cumulative journey upwards from low to high: a symphonic Tower of Babel, reaching for the heavens. All of the works on this release are world premiere recordings, and the album is being released to mark Svend Hvidfelt Nielsen’s 60th birthday. Nielsen is also a gifted church organist, and on this album he plays the organ solo part in the Toccata.

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REVIEW:

The Ophelia Dances is certainly strange and interesting music, more “ambient” in sound but still well structured beneath its odd sonorities. Though apparently a continuous work, it is clearly composed in discrete movements, placing the accordion in the midst of bitonal swirls of sound and pungent brass and string interjections.

The Symphony No. 3, written in 2010, uses a sort of musical “big bang” at the outset, followed by “stuttering fragments” which “muster to initiate the development of the symphony’s vertical structure, supported by foundations in the form of tectonic pedal notes.” This is indeed a technical description of what happens, but the listening process is more emotional and therefore more fascinating.

A strange sort of album, then, yet fascinating and certainly worth a listen!

– Arts Music Lounge