The celebration of YULE in Northern Europe harks back to a transition from ancient Pagan Germanic culture to the more formal spirituality of the newer Christian rite. On this album the two traditions sit side by side, creating a matrix where acappella voices meet improvising instruments in a synthesis of secular and sacred.

Trio Mediæval - Anna Maria Friman - Linn Andrea Fuglseth - Jorunn Lovise + Husan Sinikka Langeland, kantele; Vegar Vårdal, hardanger fiddle and violin; Arve Henriksen, trumpet and organ; Anders Jormin, double bass; Helge Norbakken, percussion.

PAX is a concept in which music, lyrics and the sacred space of the cathedral energize each other in these performances of new works by Norwegian composers who all approach the theme of peace with their own individual reflections and interpretations. The music is composed specifically to be performed and recorded as an immersive experience.

Using a deep time perspective composer Henning Sommerro chooses themes from myths and from European history. Three works for soloist and orchestra and three visions encounter resistance before they struggle forward to possible redemption and resolution. The first work is Solkverv. The skald Sigvat Tordsson is on his way to the eternal city. It is just before the summer solstice, and the skald has time to reflect about important issues in his life and times – and to think about who to include in his visions. We are enticed further to Ostara, and the mysterious spring goddess of the same name.

A lot is at stake as the vernal equinox approaches. A matter of one step forward and two back. Under the ground bilateral lines of communication are busy signalling spring ... or are they? The sense of seriousness is heightened, and the last work gives the album’s title extra gravity. In Borders we move to our own time. The year is 2016, and our world picture is shaken by a stream of refugees the like of which Europe has not seen since the Second World War. Accusations across countries’ borders proliferate. It is the others who are responsible for taking in refugees, and hopes for a united response are collapsing. Who dares acknowledge and respond to the alarming roar of the work’s opening?

As the eighteenth century progressed, Trondheim experienced strong economic growth. The Great Nordic War was over, and merchants set about exporting timber, stockfish, and copper from the mines of Trøndelag. They maintained close contact with their networks in the main cities of Northern Europe, and Trondheim's luxury and extravagance characterised its social milieu. Thus, the latest fashions, literature and music from the Continent found their way to Trondheim. This recording portrays a selection of contemporaneous music that is preserved in Trondheim. The manuscripts may be found in the Gunnerus Library's special collections and probably belonged to the town musician and polymath Johan Daniel Berlin (1714–87) and his circle of musicians. They provide a unique insight into how European instrumental music found fertile ground in one of Denmark–Norway's largest provincial towns in the decades preceding the union's dissolution in 1814.

The exquisitely decorated 15th century choir book known as the Old Hall manuscript was lost to history for the best part of 400 years until its reappearance in a Catholic seminary at the end of the 19th century. The largest surviving collection of medieval motets and mass movements, it immediately became the most celebrated source of English music of the period. It was written in the first instance by a single scribe to ensure that the music of his fellow singers was not forgotten. Many of them are known only from this manuscript, and on this album they find their voices again after more than half a millennium of silence, transformed by the singing of Trio Mediæval in the company of Catalina Vicens, alongside new music by David Lang and Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen. Hailed as a "fascinating journey with music of timeless beauty", Trio Mediæval’s highly acclaimed first album Words of the Angel in 2001 launched the group into the elite circles of early music ensembles and introduced them to a broad international audience. Formed in 1997, the Grammy nominated vocal ensemble consists of founder members Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Anna Maria Friman, and Jorunn Lovise Husan who joined the group in 2018. Trio Mediæval has recorded eight albums for ECM Records. An Old Hall Ladymass is their second release, following Solacium, with the Norwegian label 2L. Produced by Morten Lindberg.

Our world is wounded. All around us we see the cracks. And yet the world is beautiful and blessed in so many ways. This extraordinary work begins from the Beatitudes and responds with new poetry that sheds light on who among us might be in need of blessing. These texts, ancient and new, are woven into a colorful tapestry of music inspired by a variety of traditions, highlighting the universality of the human experience. TUVAYHUN creates an opportunity for performers and listeners alike to inspire and be inspired, to be blessed, and be a blessing.

Trio Mediæval’s collection of hymns and lullabies — intimate songs as old as time and as new as tomorrow: this is music with no boundaries, celebrating our common humanity. We’ll never know the first song or the first singer, and we’ll never know what they sang about. But if time could unwind and we could hear it, perhaps we would witness a mother or a father singing the first lullaby. When we sing a hymn or a lullaby we become a link in a chain that began in the unknowable past and will stretch into the infinite future: a timeless continuum of solace and comfort. The new lullabies by Anders Jormin and Sinikka Langeland began in their heads as little musical gifts for real children, and are here sung for all of us by three singers who have sung many a lullaby to their own children, aided and abetted on this album by Trygve Seim, and Mats Eilertsen, fathers both. Hailed as a "fascinating journey with music of timeless beauty", Trio Mediæval’s highly acclaimed first album Words of the Angel in 2001 launched the group into the elite circles of early music ensembles and introduced them to a broad international audience. Formed in 1997, the Grammy nominated vocal ensemble consists of founder members Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Anna Maria Friman, and Jorunn Lovise Husan who joined the group in 2018. Trio Mediæval has recorded eight albums for ECM Records. Solacium is their first release with the Norwegian label 2L.

A 2021 GRAMMY Nominee for Best Immersive Audio Album!

The Norwegian Girls Choir and pianist Tord Gustavsen combine their talents in a programme of much-loved Christmas carols, leading the audience through expressive improvisations and quiet melancholy to glittering, ecstatic moments. Anne Karin Sundal-Ask directs the performances with attention to each individual singer and to the distinctive sound of the choir as a whole. The result is an uplifting, emotional encounter in which these radiant, young voices appeal to our very hearts. The Norwegian Girls Choir is an independent continuation of The Norwegian Broadcasting Company’s Girls Choir, which was established in 1947. The choir has long been a strong institution in Norwegian cultural life, and it has fostered a number of great singers, musicians and artists.

The sound of the horn epitomized stormy emotions for composers of Romantic music. Robert Schumann is said to have spoken of the horn as being the orchestra's soul. For poets, the horn's sound was a symbol of the soul's longing. For horn players, however, what was at stake for much of the Romantic period was the soul of the horn itself, for it was an instrument that faced experiment and change occasioned by new technology, notably the invention of the valve. This recording explores and illustrates this important era in the evolution of the horn.

The present recording features both one of the longest and one of the shortest quartets in the string quartet repertoire. There is no denying that Schubert´s last string quartet is great in every sense of the word, but Beethoven´s “Quartetto Serioso”, although minor in size, is by no means dwarfed by it when it comes to sheer artistic quality; both quartets are indeed major works and a staple on the diet of any string quartet of merit. Even so, the concept of minor and major immediately springs to mind when contemplating putting these two completely different masterpieces on the same album. Duration apart, there is the obvious question of tonality: one work in F minor, the other in G major, which is simple enough and by itself justifies the album title. But things get more complicated the moment we subject the two works to a closer scrutiny. Oslo String Quartet is widely recognized as one of the most versatile string quartets of our day. Since it was founded in 1991 it has established a reputation as an ensemble that unites high artistic standards with a degree of playfulness and an absolute integrity. The quartet’s concerts and recordings have consistently received acclaim, both by the public and by critics. A strong attachment to the music of Beethoven has resulted in several performances of his complete string quartets, for example in the quartet’s festival “The Beethoven Code” in 2006. Their programmes range from the classic string quartet repertoire to the works of contemporary composers, but also include music in other genres, and their unique versions of, for example, Peer Gynt and Tosca break with what is normally expected of a string quartet.

Stale Kleiberg’s Mass for Modern Man is about the loss of existential meaning as an antithesis to faith and belief. The work commutes between these two extremes, and raises the following underlying question: Is belief possible for modern man? In this work, the answer is ‘yes’: not a resounding ‘yes,’ but a ‘yes’ in spite of all. The work is a large-scale concert mass for two soloists, choir and orchestra where Kleiberg’s neo-romantic music commutes between the intimate and the grand. Stale Kleiberg (b. 1958) is a major Norwegian composer with a considerable international reputation. His music is widely performed in Norway and abroad, and is mostly commissioned by well-established orchestras, ensembles, and performers. There are also many published recordings of his music, including seven albums (the present one is number eight), that have received outstanding international reviews. Kleiberg’s music is characterized by a highly distinctive form of extended tonality and by meticulous attention to coloristic details.

It is common to date the beginning of the Renaissance to the mid-14th century. From the ashes of the Black Death emerged a society that was fundamentally changed , and to a large extent saw itself as re-born - formed a new. It cannot be a coincidence that this transformation first took place in the very parts of Europe that had been at the centre of the Roman Empire when at it's strongest, in Italy. Florence became the main powerhouse of the new Europe, and from there the Renaissance spread rapidly, bringing an intense cultural flowering to France, England, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain. It is in these countries that Nordic Brass Ensemble has assembled the repertoire for "European Tour" - music arranged specially for this ensemble by Hans Petter Stagnes and Stian Aareskjold. Modern brass instruments have a hsitory going back to the Jaissaries, the Ottoman sultan's special military corps. Contact between Renaissance Europe and Islamic culture helped determine how European culture, and in particular it's music, would develop in this period. Nordic Brass Ensemble is made up of musicians from symphony orchestras and wind ensembles in the Nordic countries, and it has always played early music.