The accordion was one of the first instruments to become common in Iceland in the nineteenth century. In recent years, Iceland has produced several out- standing accordionists, including Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson. This release contains music by three generations of Icelandic composers, written between 1972 and 2020, including two works created especially for Ásgeirsson himself. Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson is a classical accordionist based in Copenhagen where he is enrolled in the post-graduate program of the Royal Danish Academy of Music under the tutelage of Geir Draugsvoll, one of the leading accordion soloist/pedagogues worldwide.

Listening to Rued Langgaard’s works for solo piano is like reading an open book. All through his life, Langgaard had a close relationship with the piano and composed well over 50 works for the instrument, in which his development as a composer, and as a person, can be traced step by step. In this fourth volume of piano works by the deeply original Danish composer, Berit Johansen Tange captures the fierce inner life of Langgaard, his the charm and incomparable twists in color and mood that are all part of Langgaard’s both delicate and visionary expression.

Even as he emerges onto Denmark’s new music scene as a major new voice, Matias Vestergård is a rarity on it: a composer fluent, flexible, prolific and poly-stylistic who draws on genres ranging from hymnody to cabaret while probing some of the basic theories of sound and its production. The music recorded here was written during Vestergård’s years at the Academy of Music in Copenhagen, charting a process of self-discovery described by the composer as ‘my younger self trying to deal with the serious classical music heritage I love.’

HOLMBOE Sonatas for Guitar: No. 1; No. 2. Five Intermezzi for Guitar. Duo Concertato for Violin and Guitar. Parlare del più e del meno. Canto e Danza for Recorder and Guitar. Seven Folk Ballads for Recorder and Guitar • Jesper Sivebæk (gtr); Johannes Søe Hansen (vn); Bolette Roed (rcr) • DACAPO 8.226143 (71:20)


Danish composer Vagn Holmboe began writing for the guitar late in his career, at the age of 70, and then continued to create works for the instrument for another 13 years. It’s not clear what drew him to the instrument. He said little about it other than to comment that he wanted to write for it, and so he did. He first composed more formal works—two sonatas—to avoid folk associations. Each is a suite of thematically related pieces, worked out in the organic way that he typically developed his material, and very concise, especially the second of these. Folk qualities were impossible to avoid, however, as a quick listen to almost any of the works here will demonstrate. Still, this is hardly Holmboe taking up “light music” at the end of his life, for there is much complexity and sophistication of invention, as well. The Five Intermezzi , which followed two years later in 1981, are of a similar character, but the composer is starting to actually embrace the folk connections, using a folk-like melody of obvious Spanish flavor as a unifying theme, and adding characteristic rhythmic percussive effects and shifting meters as well.


In 1983, he went further with Seven Folk Ballads , employing actual folk tunes from England, Israel, France, Ukraine, and his native Denmark. The original intent was to create duos for balalaika and guitar, but eventually the composer opted for the more complementary sound of the recorder. The setting of each tune, beginning with the familiar The Three Ravens from England, captures the character of the folk melody with simplicity and grace. In the Duo Concertato for Violin and Guitar (1986) the violin adds an Eastern European quality as the two instruments engage in a witty and sometimes dramatic conversation. In the last solo work, the introspective Parlare del più e del meno (1988), the conversation becomes a monolog, internalized in five very short movements of great density, rhythmic freedom, and centered calm, while the last chamber work for guitar, Canto e Danza , written in 1992 when Holmboe was 83, is a set of variations on a Spanish harvest song, in three contrasting movements, followed by a lively baroque dance movement which sounds like the work of a much younger man. His exploration of the instrument was thorough, to say the least.


The stylistic rather than strictly chronological structuring of the CD program, working from the more serious sonatas to the encore-like folk ballads, works beautifully. The performers, all outstanding Danish musicians, capture the delicate personality of each work perfectly, most especially guitarist Jesper Sivebæk. The engineering is first-rate, with a palpable sense of those performers in a real space. There are fine notes on the music. The music has charm and substance. I really can’t think of a better way to invest 70 minutes, whether for heart or head.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

Recording information: Carl Nielsen Academy of Music (08/16/2008-08/17/2008); Carl Nielsen Academy of Music (09/20/2008).

TRIBUTES-Pulse is a collaboration between American filmmaker Bill Morrison (b. 1965) and Danish composer and percussionist Simon Christensen (b. 1971).

Christensen originally conceived of the project as a tribute to four American composers, Charles Ives, Conlon Nancarrow, Steve Reich and Trent Reznor. The project is comprised of four movements, with the themes of Shifting (slightest change), Multiple (simultaneously different), Across (different directions) and Beat (moving synchronized) respectively corresponding to each composer.

The idea of "Pulse" is explored in both the music and the film. Christensen conceived of the role of Pulse - the rhythmic recurrence of vibration - in the music of these four composers. But pulse is also explored as the through-line in a life, civilization, and nature. Using exquisitely deteriorating nitrate-based archival film, Morrison weaves a story from the remnants of disparate narratives. The episodes appear intermittently between the undulating pulse of the film's decay, the imagery compromised - yet made all the more poignant - by a dying celluloid medium. The four sections correspond visually to the four elements as a frontier for Man - Water, Earth, Fire and Air. The first glimpses moments in a woman's life. The second cuts between two frontier stories, when buffalo freely roamed the plains. The third examines industry and the loss of the frontier. The fourth explores flight, humankind's attempt to escape to the heavens, and Man's inevitable return to earth.

Captures the rhythmic vitality of this brilliant but tricky music.

This is the second of Ars Nova Copenhagen’s Taverner discs. The first centred on Taverner’s Western Wynde Mass (see review) and at least one commentator said that it was the version which succeeded best in dispelling his doubts about whether the mass ever quite transcends the four-square element in its construction.
 
This new disc uses Taverner’s Gloria Tibi Trinitas mass as its main work. Like the first disc, Paul Hillier intersperses the movements of the mass with other motets and plainchant to create a more liturgical feel. They open the disc with Fayrfax’s glorious Magnificat ‘Regale’ from the Eton Choir Book and continue with motets by White, Byrd and Tallis.
 
The presence of the Fayrfax makes this disc something of a hymn to the great Tudor choir books. The Taverner mass is found in the Forrest-Heather part-books which were compiled for use at Cardinal College, where Taverner was choirmaster. His time there proved to be brief as the choral provision at the college was vastly reduced on Cardinal Wolsey’s fall.
 
The title of the Taverner mass comes from the plainchant ‘Gloria tibi Trinitas’ which is a Vespers antiphon for Trinity Sunday. Hilliard and Ars Nova Copenhagen include the plainchant propers for Trinity Sunday, thus allowing us to hear the plainchant which forms the cantus firmus of the mass.
 
The choir of Cardinal College comprised 16 choristers and 12 clerkes; Ars Nova Copenhagen deploys some 15 to 17 singers, with women sopranos and altos. They make a goodly noise and the performances on this disc are notable for the excitement and vigour which the singers bring to this music.
 
Fayrfax came from the previous generation to Taverner, and his elaborate 5-part Magnificat ‘Regale’ is filled with rhythmic energy and brilliantly elaborate contrapuntal parts. It makes an apt complement to Taverner’s 6-part Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas. The choir are similarly glorious in this music. In both works, the solo sections work very well, with the unnamed single voices providing fine contrast to the larger-scale full passages. The tessitura of the soprano part occasionally seems to give the singers pause. The top line of both works is high, in the typical early Tudor manner but generally the sopranos are ideally flexible and light.
 
Rather annoyingly the CD liner notes do not indicate what pitch the Taverner is sung at and, lacking a printed score, I am entirely unable to determine whether Hillier performs the mass at the high pitch which modern scholarship suggests, but I suspect that they don’t.
 
Hillier has obviously urged his singers on vigorously and there are one or two passages, particularly in the Magnificat, where you can feel the choir being goaded on by Hillier and just failing to follow him. This is a small point and does not greatly detract from the performance; frankly I am not sure I would have noticed but at the moment I am rehearsing the Magnificat with my own group so was paying particular heed to it.
 
Robert White came from a later generation than Taverner. He seems to have had a fondness for the Vespers hymn Christe ui lux es et dies because he made four settings of it. Each alternates chant with a setting which is woven around the chant. Here Hillier and his group perform the final two, each a gentle and tiny masterpiece. Byrd made his own setting of the same words and this setting is also included on the disc. In it Byrd sets himself a technical challenge - and succeeds, of course. Each verse has the chant threaded through it, but in a steadily higher voice starting with bass in verse 1 and ending with soprano in verse 5. Part of the charm of Byrd’s technical solution is that it is possible to appreciate the piece without ever knowing this. The group finishes with Tallis’s Te lucis ante terminum - another masterly little work.
 
The group is recorded in quite a generous acoustic, but the recording preserves the vigour and clarity of their singing and individual lines have both clarity and vitality.
 
The CD booklet includes an informative article by Sally Dunkley together with full texts and translations.
 
Having said how much I enjoyed this disc, then I have to confess that there is one place where you ought to look if you are interested in a performance of Taverner’s Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas. In 2007 Christ Church Cathedral Choir - the present day successors to Taverner’s Cardinal College Choir - issued a recording of the mass under their conductor Stephen Darlington. This was the first recording of the work by the sort of choir - men and boys - which Taverner had in mind. And it is a release which demands to be taken seriously. So the choice is yours, depending on your views on the boy trebles v. female sopranos controversy.
 
This is definitely a disc for those for whom many recordings of music from this period come into the perfect but cool category. Hillier and his singers, whilst retaining sufficient perfection, bring the elaborate music brilliantly to life.
 
You might hear more polished and perfect performances than this one. But I don’t think you will hear one which excites more, or one which better captures the rhythmic vitality of this brilliant but tricky music.
 
-- Robert Hugill, MusicWeb International

The 500 years that separate Renaissance master Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-97) and Danish composer Bent Sørensen (b. 1958) seem to disappear in this extraordinary Requiem which is a totality integrated both dramatically and musically; a work that unites the stylistic contrasts in a mode of expression that seems at once timeless and entirely present. The project has been initiated by conductor Paul Hillier and interpreted by his GRAMMY-winning ensemble Ars Nova Copenhagen.

R E V I E W:

Shoots straight into the soul and lingers long in the mind.

This is a fascinating and highly successful project. Without going into the kind of detail which the booklet notes give us, this is Johannes Ockeghem´s Missa pro defunctis, integrated with newly composed movements by Bengt Sørensen to create what is, if not an entirely new piece, certainly a very new and fresh way of connecting the new in the old, with the old in the new. This is an extension of Paul Hillier’s more frequent combining of contemporary with early music in his programming, and here he has brought in Bengt Sørensen to complete ‘the bits which are missing’ in Ockeghem’s work.
 
Ockeghem’s Missa is full of moments which can wrong-foot you into thinking that you are hearing something contemporary. Harmonic shifts and quasi-romantic melodic lines abound, and just listen to some of those startling female-only passages in the Kyrie. The Graduale flows from Sørensen’s Lacrimosa as if from the same fearlessly expressive source, and there are moments in the Offertorium which are truly overwhelming.
 
Sørensen’s contributions are idiomatically sensitive and integrate by way of atmosphere, but are by no means a soft-pedalled imitation of ancient style. The opening Responsorium has plenty of reassuring parallel intervals and open harmonies, but immediately alerts the ear to what is to come, with close harmonies and strange dissonances which have inner resolution, but no ultimate cadence. The central Recordare Jesu pie in the Sequentia is one of those impossibly melting creations which make your hairs stand up with some kind of prehensile spiritual angst. Separated by plainchant, the first two minutes of the following Lacrimosa is truly beautiful: a moment of suspended time where the tears fall, but never reach the ground. There are moments of restrained drama here and in the Benedictus, where vibrato is used as a textural effect, making the air itself ring like a Tibetan bowl. The entire Requiem cycle closes with Sørensen’s In Paradisum, is the most extensive and in some ways the most far reaching, as the booklet notes describe, “with cluster-like chordal effects that are thinned out, recondensed and break like waves against each other.”
 
All of the texts are printed in the booklet in Latin, English and Danish, revealing a contribution from Dylan Thomas in the Responsorium: Memento mei Deus: “Hourly I sigh,/for all things are leaf-like/and cloud-like. Flowerly I die/for all things are grief-like/and shroud-like.” There is a diagram at the back of the booklet which shows the position of singers and microphones, with a more conventional choir setting for the Ockeghem, and singers all around the venue for Sørensen’s work. In stereo this effect is not so very noticeable, though there are enough added dimensions and everything remains perfectly balanced. With a surround set-up the effect is quite magical. I searched high and low for the name of the church where this was recorded, but even un-named this is a perfect acoustic for such unaccompanied vocal scoring. This is one of those recordings for which you close your eyes and give yourself entirely over to a very rich musical experience indeed. Paul Hillier’s Ars Nova Copenhagen is a remarkable collection of vocalists for which this work is tailor-made, and the music is brought to life in a way which shoots straight into the soul and lingers long in the mind.
 
-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Langgaard: Piano Works, Vol. 2

Includes work(s) by Rued Langgaard. Soloist: Berit Tange.

For Dacapo and the Nightingale String Quartet (NSQ) alike, this is a quickish follow-up to volume 1 of Rued Langgaard's string quartets, released in spring 2012. It has a very similar feel. The only noteworthy difference, arguably, is the fact that the three works heard here come from an earlier period. That was before his music became more idiosyncratically flirtatious - or "filled with so much frustration and weirdness", as the NSQ's first violinist referred to the first-disc quartets. Indeed, this trio in particular is said to encapsulate feelings of love towards a certain 'Dora' that would stay with Langgaard all his life - even after his later marriage to Constance. There is, consequently, a lot of lyrical warmth and nostalgia embedded in these scores, which are basically late-Romantic-cum-neo-Classical in spirit. They are indeed conservative enough for Carl Nielsen's somewhat earlier quartets to be considered a useful reference point.

Dacapo have promised nine string quartets, the six numbered ones plus the A flat and Rosengaardsspil, both heard here, and the set of variations already appearing on volume 1. There exists also a late and very short quartet movement, the 'Italian Scherzo', which may or may not be included on the single volume to come. With the cycle Dacapo are, curiously, in direct competition with themselves: a double disc featuring quartets nos. 2-6 was recorded by the estimable Kontra Quartet in the 1980s, originally appearing on RCA LPs (DCCD 9302). It appears the Kontras never did complete their Langgaard cycle, although that may be due in part to gaps in the scholarship at the time.

Lest the collector be drawn to the present set primarily by the 'SACD' badge, it may be worth recalling that the first disc, recorded by the same team at the same location, did not really deliver 'Super-Audio' engineering, despite a short-listing for the 2013 BBC Music Magazine Awards. Volume 2 is no different: spacious, but so bright that the NSQ might have been given protective sunglasses for the recording sessions. Furthermore, although microphones have thankfully been kept away from players' noses, background traffic does intrude repeatedly in the more tranquil passages - of which there are quite a few.

Still, these quibbles are not so major as to constitute a true caveat emptor. Besides Langgaard's delightful, fundamentally hospitable music, the NSQ's interpretations are also most commendable. Volume 1 was in fact their commercial recording debut, but they showed little sign of greenness or nerves. A year or so on, they seem even more relaxed and in tune with the works of their maverick compatriot. A blend of expressive astuteness and technical self-confidence leaves the whole project smelling aptly of roses. The CD's credit side is further augmented by extensive and informative booklet notes, in English and Danish.

-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

“A tribute to inwardness, patience and beauty.” This is how the Danish composer Poul Ruders (b. 1949) described his Viola Concerto from 1994. The music has an almost Late Romantic expressive style and is played with rich, many-faceted feeling by the Norwegian viola virtuoso Lars Anders Tomter. The work premiered at the BBC Proms in 1995, whereafter he rewrote the piece. This recording contains the revised 2013 version. It is devoted to the right and ability of music to stay aloof, maintaining its emotional integrity, detached from the tyranny of fashion and trend. In his Handel Variations (2009) Poul Ruders has composed no fewer than 90 variations on eight bars from Handel’s Water Music. The short variations grow together into a symphonic totality where the orchestral colors are constantly shifting and where Handel’s starting point develops into pure Ruders.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Recording information: Tampere Concert Hall (10/14/2008-10/21/2008).

ROMANTIC TROMBONE CONCERTOS • Jesper Juul (tbn); Henrik Vagn Christensen, cond; Thomas Dausgaard, cond; 1 Danish Natl SO • dacapo 6.220526 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 69:43)


HOLMBOE Concerto No. 12. HYLDGAARD Concerto Borealis. JØRGENSEN Romance. Suite for Trombone and Orchestra. GRØNDAHL Concerto (1924) 1


A bit oddly titled, the disc contains five original works for trombone and orchestra, not all of which are concertos, and only one or two of which, strictly speaking, are romantic; though I would qualify that by saying that music that once sounded determinedly modernistic to our ears seems less so with the passage of time. What these works do have in common is that all are by 20th-century Danish composers, all of whom, according to the note, were inspired by Nielsen’s scoring for trombones in his symphonies, and by a national musical culture that has promoted the trombone and produced some of its finest players.


Of the four composers represented here, Vagn Holmboe (1909–1996) is likely to be the most familiar from a large catalog of symphonic and concerted orchestral works. His 1950 Concerto for Trombone and Chamber Orchestra has been previously recorded by famed trombonist Christian Lindberg, and is available on two different BIS CDs, (same recording): one, an all-Holmboe program, contains concerted works for various solo instruments; the other, all works for trombone but by different composers. Take your pick. Overall, I find the current program more satisfying, and Juul’s tone smoother and more evenly balanced between registers. Holmboe’s concerto is a mostly buoyant, bouncy affair that has much in common with Honegger and Milhaud.


Søren Hyldgaard (b. 1962) and Axel Jørgensen (1881–1947) were both new to me, though Jørgensen’s Romance and Suite have also been recorded by Lindberg on separate CDs, neither of which I’ve heard. Ironically perhaps, it is Hyldgaard’s 2000 (revised 2005) Concerto Borealis , the most recently written work of the bunch that comes closest to fitting the “Romantic” label. Lyrical, yearning, mysterious, and extremely moving, it has about it the character of one of those quiet, contemplative, chorale-like, open-plains movements reminiscent of something by Aaron Copland. I’d spring for the disc just for this one piece—it’s that gorgeous. Jørgensen’s Romance and Suite are also very effective, but more conversational in tone; more than once I had the impression of listening to music that could serve as background to a light-hearted romantic film, which of course always has its episode or two of tears and wistful nostalgia.


If it was written for trombone, Christian Lindberg must have recorded it, as he has Launy Grøndahl’s (1886–1960) concerto as well. In this case, so has another trombonist, Branimir Slokar. Since I am not familiar with either of these recordings, however, I am unable to say whether either or both present the piece in its 1924 first version, as it is played here by Jesper Juul. This being the earliest composed piece on the disc, it is not surprising that its musical language, for its time, is fairly conservative, as is its form, a standard fast-slow-fast three-movement concerto. It does not rise, however, to the state of romantic bliss that Hyldgaard conjures in his concerto.


One doesn’t usually think of the trombone as a melodic soloist in concerted works; but if nothing else, this release proves that preconceived notions often fall before such persuasively contrary evidence as that offered by this CD. Strongly recommended, and not just to fans of the instrument.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins


This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

It was sad, listening to this excellent disc--sad because of all the post-Nielsen Danish composers, only two, Holmboe and Riisager, have much hope of becoming genuine concert favorites, and the chances of Riisager getting a fair break are next to none. Today's musical establishment, especially in Europe, places no value whatsoever on the very qualities that make Riisager worth hearing: clarity, craftsmanship, accessibility, and melodic beauty. Sources of arts funding have become so politicized, bureaucratized, and utterly unresponsive to feedback from the taxpaying public, as well as so focused on what is modern and trendy rather than on what is good and stands a chance of succeeding, that this music probably is doomed to relative obscurity. It's a minor miracle that any of it gets recorded, so at least record collectors have a chance to sample now and then.


Riisager's cause is further harmed by the fact that his principle field of work was ballet. A student of Roussel, his aesthetic is French in the best sense: immaculately polished surfaces, transparent but often dazzling orchestration, no wasted gestures or gratuitous point-making, supple rhythms, and memorable thematic material. Now that Mr. Boulez and his crew have succeeded in destroying several centuries of this same French style and tradition even in France, it's hard to imagine any place (barring a miracle) that can serve as a staging ground for the resurrection of Riisager's posthumous reputation. Denmark itself probably isn't influential enough culturally to promote him widely, and as noted above, likely wouldn't do it even if it could. Even Dacapo, wonderful label that it is, needs to avoid playing favorites with so many composers scrabbling over limited resources and the privilege of being heard on disc. Still, if I were running that label, I would be planning as much Riisager as possible because at least he stands a chance of selling, and I can't imagine anyone who hears his music not enjoying it and not wanting to buy more.


Actually, Qarrtsiluni has been recorded previously, by Rozhdestvensky on Chandos, a performance a good 25 percent slower than this one, and I have to say that Bo Holten's more energetic vision serves the work very well. The piece is a sort of Inuit folk-influenced rhythmic study in the manner of Ravel's Boléro, or perhaps more aptly, Revueltas' Sensamayá. After a brief, harmonically pungent introduction, the music slowly builds to a vibrantly intoxicating climax (Finnish composer Uuno Klami's Kalevala Suite also comes to mind here). It's all over in about eight and a half minutes (11 if you're Rozhdestvensky), and as a short ballet or concert work it provides an ideal introduction to the composer and his pellucid sound world.


Manerenen (Moon Reindeer), composed in 1956, is a "choreographic symphony", to use Ravel's term, lasting some 45 minutes and based on a beautiful Lapp myth somewhat akin to the Rusalka or Undine legends. A young girl on the losing end of a love triangle asks the help of a demonic sorcerer to win the heart of her beloved. He agrees, but at a terrible cost about which he had revealed nothing: she becomes his slave, every evening transformed into a beautiful white reindeer that lures young men to their deaths (the sorcerer controls a whole troop of them, it turns out). When at last her dual identity becomes known, her newly-won boyfriend, who at first defends her, finally kills her. The music is as magical as the tale itself: sad, primal, full of nocturnal mystery alternating with colorful dance numbers, very much in the style of Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé conceptually (though it shares Copland's open sonorities and rhythmic zest). Riisager quotes no actual folk music, though he's obviously caught the idiom and, more importantly, has the taste and talent to treat simple materials with great subtlety and sophistication.


Holten and the Aarhus Symphony play the music with more than the necessary commitment and enthusiasm, obviously relishing its many opportunities to create evocative sonorities and glowing textures, and Dacapo's sonics are simply ideal: warm, focused, and clean. If ballet companies outside of Denmark would pick up some of these works, I have no doubt that they would be very successful with the public. In the meantime, I can only urge listeners to snatch up whatever orchestral music of Riisager's comes along, in the hope that someone at Dacapo or elsewhere will notice that they have a potential winner on their hands and get behind him in a serious and methodical way. Given the vast amount of characterless crap foisted on the public as "new music", Riisager is a composer whose distinctive body of work, firmly contemporary but also listener-friendly without pandering, deserves the widest possible exposure. [5/31/2005]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com