One of Sweden’s leading composers, Rolf Martinsson had an international breakthrough with the trumpet concerto Bridge, composed for Håkan Hardenberger who has also recorded it (BIS-1208). Martinsson has since gone on to compose solo works for performers including Martin Fröst, Anne Sofie von Otter and Christian Lindberg, and enjoys a particularly close collaboration with the soprano Lisa Larsson. The two started working together in 2011, devising a soprano version of Orchestral Songs on Poems by Emily Dickinson, and Lisa Larsson has since performed Martinsson’s music at more than a hundred concerts to date. A number of leading orchestras have commissioned works from Rolf Martinsson, including the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra for which he composed his Concerto for Orchestra. In descriptions of Martinsson’s music, words such as ‘lush’, ‘colorful’ and ‘cinematic’ are often used – qualities which have proved attractive to a large audience, as well as to a number of eminent conductors. Sakari Oramo and Andrew Manze, also heard on this release, are among those who have championed works by Rolf Martinsson, in Sweden as well as internationally.

On this release, the Trondheim Sinfonietta, founded in 1998, has gathered four works from the three decades encompassing the ensemble’s existence. All four seem to be haunted by an even deeper past: Bent Sørensen’s Minnelieder is the composer’s third version of a work originally sparked-off by a book about the 14th century, while Toshio Hosokawa’s Drawing, from a decade later, was inspired by the very start of life. Kristin Norderval’s Chapel Meditation began its existence as an improvisation, but looks back to music from centuries earlier, while the most recent work, Mantra by Ellen Lindquist, also mines a venerable musical tradition, that of the age-old Indonesian gamelan orchestra that for over 100 years has had an influence on Western composers such as Debussy, Britten, Steve Reich et al. Set for varying forces and numbers of performers, the four works together form a fascinating picture of the kaleidoscopic possibilities open to composers around the turn of the millennium.

Clemency, a chamber opera for five singers and string orchestra in one act; composed 2009-10 and the third operatic collaboration between composer James MacMillan and poet Michael Symmons Roberts to date – is a work exploring a central but enigmatic Old Testament episode. The composer has commented that Clemency is set in the present day and ‘is not intended as an old Hollywood style Biblical drama. Abraham and Sarah are modern people who are visited by three strange but modern figures that, it turns out, have something terroristic about them. There is something of the ancient and the modern in the piece; the ancient, Biblical tale but also the kinds of thing people face today in many parts of the world.’ For the first U.S. production and its world premiere recording, Boston Lyric Opera, with the approval of both composer and librettist, decided to introduce the figure of Hagar, servant to Sarah but also the mother of Abraham’s first child, Ishmael. This is done by incorporating a version of Schubert’s early song Hagar’s Lament as a prelude to this opera, challenging us to measure the impact of our lives in a modern world that continues to be marked politically and spiritually by acts of mercy and acts of vengeance.

Principal trombonist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Jörgen van Rijen is also much in demand as a soloist with a special commitment to promoting his instrument. Various composers have written new pieces for him, including James MacMillan and Theo Verbey, whose works are included on the present release together with Luciano Berio’s SOLO for trombone and orchestra. The present recordings were made at concerts with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Iván Fischer, Markus Stenz and Ed Spanjaard respectively. They have previously been showcased on three different discs on the RCO’s own Live Horizon label, and are gathered together here for the first time. The album therefore highlights the versatility of van Rijen as a musician, but also of his instrument as perceived and presented by three very different composers.

In 2012, Emilia Amper’s solo debut disc Trollfageln (‘The Magic Bird) was a revelation. Not only to those who had never before heard the silvery sound of the nyckelharpa (‘keyed fiddle’), but also for the way Emilia on it combined her roots in Scandinavian folk music with her very own and individual voice. Lux, her new album, confirms the promise of the earlier disc- a selection of her own compositions and traditional Swedish and Norwegian tunes which she performs solo and with a group of musician friends in various constellations. With its roots stretching back to medieval Europe, the nyckelharpa almost died out in the middle of the twentieth century, but has made a remarkable comeback and is attracting an increasing number of performers in Sweden and around the world. Firmly grounded in Swedish traditional music, Emilia Amper has also worked with musicians from many other backgrounds, and can be regarded as an important ambassador for her instrument, but also for the inquisitive and open spirit which characterizes modern folk music.

Love plays a significant part in most operas, but all too often it is frustrated, or entangled with deception, humiliation and betrayal. With her new disc Camilla Tilling presents a near-comprehensive catalogue of the emotions that the vagaries of love can raise in the breast of an operatic heroine. And these emotions are universal and timeless, afflicting servants and countesses, Grecian princesses, a sorceress from Damascus and a young lady of 18th-century Naples alike. Gluck’s Armide glories in having Renaud in her power – until she realizes that her feelings makes it impossible to destroy him as she had planned. Newly raised from the dead, his Euridice is defenceless against the strong emotions of the living, and beset by doubts when Orpheus refuses to acknowledge her on their way back to earth. In the bravura aria Come scoglio, Mozart’s Fiordiligi proclaims her steadfast love for Guglielmo, but in the following act of the opera she regretfully admits to having been enamoured by another. And from The Marriage of Figaro we hear Susanna inviting the loved one to a nocturnal rendez-vous (‘Deh vieni, non tardar’) as well as her mistress, the Countess, wondering in ‘Dove sono’ what happened to the loving marriage she once had. With a soprano typically described as ‘radiant’, ‘vernal’ or ‘silvery’, Camilla Tilling has performed several of the roles featured here at venues such as Opéra National de Paris, Covent Garden, Salzburg Mozarteum and Drottningholm Slottsteater. On this recording she partnered by Philipp von Steinaecker and his Musica Saeculorum, whose period instruments bring out all the sweetness, pain and regret that Gluck and Mozart magically worked into their scores.

With this recording of a selection of Franz Liszt’s music for violin and piano, Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen aim at expanding our understanding of the prolific composer whose style, especially later, evolved in a manner far ahead of its time. Liszt composed his first music for violin and piano as early as 1832, returning to this instrumental combination throughout his life. Some of the pieces are re-workings of earlier compositions. In the early Grand Duo concertant pure virtuosity and the joy of playing are to the fore, but in the late works Liszt takes us on a journey into his own innermost soul.