The classical figures of Medea and Lysistrata have captivated creative artists for centuries. The latest of them is Steingrímur Rohloff, an Icelandic-German composer who found his sensual, crystal-clear musical voice while studying with Gerard Griséy in Paris. The specially configured music recorded here benefits from Tuva Semmingsen’s ravishing voice and Rohloff’s decade of collaboration with Esbjerg Ensemble – to beautiful, resonant and dramatic effect. The Icelandic-German composer Steingrimur Rohloff is one of the most prominent young Scandinavian composers, and his works have been performed in more than 25 countries worldwide. He studied in Cologne and in Paris at the Conservatoire Superieur and the IRCAM with Gérard Grisey and Marc-André Dalbavie among others; this French school of crystalline orchestral music has influenced Rohloff profoundly. Among Rohloff's many awards is the prestigious B.A. Zimmermann Award, which he won whilst living in Germany. The jury described his music as: "of an original fantasy ... exciting melodic creativity... colorful harmonies…"

Danish composer Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen brings together two of his major orchestral works of the 2010s, Der Wind bläset wo er will and his Cello Concerto, for his third release on Dacapo Records. Olesen's stunning music is about life and about being alive: each piece is a world unto itself. They are recorded here with cellist Johannes Moser and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Otto Tausk. Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen trained both as a cellist and composer at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Aarhus. As a composer he studied with Karl Aage Rasmussen, Bent Sørensen and Olav Anton Thommesen at the Academy and privately with Henryk Gorecki and Poul Ruders. He has been the leader of Ensemble 2000 and chairman of the Aarhus Young Composers Society, and is at present director of the SPOR Festival in Århus. Outside Denmark TAO's music has been performed in Germany, England, France, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Chile, Russia and Finland.

REVIEW:

Olesen’s Cello Concerto is a wonderful find and worth the price of the disc on its own. Johannes Moser is completely inside it and it’s difficult to imagine a more emotionally powerful rendition. The Dutch conductor Otto Tausk is equally attuned to the essence of this singular piece and ensures world-class accompaniment from the DNSO. Dacapo’s teriffic recording exudes clarity—the balance between soloist and orchestra seems ideal.

These two substantial works add up to just under 50 minutes of exceptional contemporary music, but frankly who’s counting? In each case the sounds Thomas Agerfeldt Olesen has devised are utterly absorbing. He writes with tremendous sophistication and wit in the first piece and with an emotional directness in the second which is as daring as it is affecting. To echo the translation of the title of the first piece, both works last as long as they do. Each will amply reward any curious, sympathetic listener. That is surely enough.

– MusicWeb International

Carl Nielsen’s incidental music The Mother was written for a gala celebrating the reunification of Southern Jutland with Denmark. The score first appeared in print in 2007 and has never been recorded in its entirety. This recording places the music in the right context for the first time, therefore providing us with a new picture of Carl Nielsen as a composer for the theatre. Carl Nielsen uses familiar songs in the play, including the Danish national anthem as well as a curious use of the national anthems from the allied countries that, with their attacks on Germany, determined the fate of Southern Jutland. The Mother unites these diverse trends: the national interest, the popular song and the cooperation with the Royal Theatre, where Nielsen himself had begun his career as a violinist and had later become a conductor.

Apocalyptic and paradisiac visions of good and evil meet aphoristic miniatures of nine small, mainly malignant insects. The rousing graphic imagery of Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) is on full display in this third volume of piano works by the deeply original Danish composer. Including three world premiere recordings, Berit Johansen Tange captures the mysterious forces, poetic gracefulness and absurd hysteria that are all part of Langgaard's both dark and wondrous expression.

Rued Langgaard’s (1893-1952) inner division can be experienced at its extreme in the chamber music written between 1913 and 1924, in which the secure world of his youth is undercut by a dark musical understream. This is most apparent in the work for piano, Music of the Abyss, which is presented here in a transcription for chamber ensemble by Allan Gravgaard Madsen (born 1984) of which this is the first recording. This meeting between Langgaard and Gravgaard brings to a climax the work’s view of modern man’s destructive strength in a crazy ride towards the abyss.

The Danish King Frederik IX's preoccupation with music must be described as atypical, in fact, unique for a member of a royal house, since it is hardly possible to cite other examples of ruling monarchs whose favorite pastime was orchestral conducting. As a conductor Frederik IX, although self-taught, favored technically difficult challenges in the great symphonic repertoire, in particular music from Wagner's operas, gave the King's unusual musical activities a certain aura. This limited edition set celebrates two very unique King/orchestra relationship, namely King Frederik IX's close affiliation with the Royal Danish Orchestra and Danish National Symphony Orchestra.

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

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (b. 1932) is one of the leading Scandinavian composers, an outstanding and insistent voice from the generation born in the inter-war years. This CD is the culmination of the composer’s unique collaboration with the world-famous American Kronos Quartet, which has been commissioning specially tailored works from the Danish composer for over 20 years.

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REVIEW:

The CD concludes with the ninth string quartet of Holmgreen, written for the Kronos Quartet in 2006. It is in a single movement, beginning and ending with recorded sounds of a roaring ocean. The blending of recorded sounds of nature and instrumental music is effective and moving, a beautiful tribute to the power of nature, representing a kind of Danish impressionism.

There is much on this collection of music that is similarly evocative, as well as much that is rather frustrating, but that mix reflects a powerful musical talent.

– Fanfare

Schlagt sie tot! is an opera about radical change and religious fanaticism. It paints a multifaceted portrait of a complex figure who transformed the world, namely the controversial catalyst of the Reformation, Martin Luther. He was a charismatic, uncompromising artistic personality, at times hateful and in constant struggle with his inner demons. Five hundred year old events, not unlike the politics of our own age, are brought to life in Bo Holten’s and Eva Sommestad Holten’s music drama, which reflects human emotion in a society set ablaze by the fire of change.

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

Jazz and swing undoubtedly weighed the most in Ib Glindemann's creative life, and few others meant more to big-band and jazz music in Denmark from the 1950s onwards than he. It remains, however, that Denmark's well-known jazz orchestra leader, trumpeter and composer had a classical side. This recording is the first to feature a fully classical Glindemann program: two sublime instrumental concertos and an impressive medley of his music celebrating his distinctive flair for writing happy, undemanding, festive and effective music. The Medley is a gathering of four pieces into a suite, arranged by Glindemann and Wolfgang Käfer. The pieces collected here come from films or from the world of program music, evoking pictures of everyday life in Copenhagen.

A lyrical suite of seven chapters for mixed choir a cappella, Jesper Koch’s Choirbook is a meditation on nature, complex and yet simple, communicating openly with the listener. Sincerity and a sense of timelessness pervade this large-scale work based on the poetry of Frank Kjørup, highly accessible and deeply immersed in the mysteries of its own beauty. Danish composer Jesper Koch (b. 1967) wrote very little vocal music until he reached his mid-40’s, primarily focusing on music for symphony orchestra. But in 2012, something unexpected happened. Jesper Koch suddenly felt a strong urge to write for the human voice and go back to the basic principles of melody and tonality, after having written rather complex orchestral music. The music in the vocal project Choirbook is melodic, concise and transparent: ‘When I write purely melodically, nothing must stand in the way of clarity. So everything superfluous is stripped away’, says Jesper Koch.

REVIEW

It is hard to imagine any ensemble such as this sounding better, and this is truly state-of-the-art high definition multichannel sound.

The notes accompanying this recording turned out to be quite illuminating...relating how in 2012 something unexpected happened regarding Koch’s approach to composition: “I suddenly had a strong urge to write for the human voice, and deal with ‘old school’ stuff like melody and tonality. These two things are, for me, closely connected...I wanted to go back to something completely basic, which I missed after having written some rather complex orchestral works.”

Koch’s Choirbook is organized in seven so-called “chapters,” each of which consists of a number of short sub-sections. I am loath to call these “movements” as they don’t really act as such. Chapter 4—at the center of the cycle—contains perhaps the most concentrated music as well as the fewest internal tracks (three). The other six chapters each contain between four and six tracks, none of which are more than three minutes long. The entire Choirbook is only a fraction over 51 minutes, spread over 31 tracks.

[The music] can be seen as a sort of personal journey, and has emotional as well as natural and even mystical overtones. The style is, as Koch set out to achieve, melodic in essence, and also features many familiar tonal gestures, not all of which go quite where the listener might expect.

The real attraction of this new recording...is the Danish National Vocal Ensemble, and the singing here is simply spectacular. I have recently had the occasion to begin to consider for review a new CD by the well-known English specialist vocal ensemble The Sixteen, and while that is a fine group, it is not even in the same cosmos as this Danish group, of much the same size. The singing here is about as close to perfect as anyone could expect, especially in terms of blend, intonation, balance, and ensemble...everything sounds just gorgeous.

The recording matches the singing in every way, and the sound presented here is luxuriously nuanced and detailed, with a massive dynamic range that never sounds anything but totally real. There is a lovely overall bloom to the sound, but also great detail, and the ensemble’s sound fills the room in such a way as only a very few choir recordings I have ever heard can manage. Enthusiastically recommended.

--Fanfare Magazine (William Kempster)

RIISAGER Slaraffenland (Fools’ Paradise): Suites 1 and 2. Tolv med Posten (12 by the Mail): 6 Dances. Concertino for Trumpet and Strings. Darduse: Suite • Thomas Dausgaard, cond; Hakan Hardenberger (tpt); Ars Nova Copenhagen; Helsingborg SO • DACAPO 6.220584 (SACD: 72:35)


Knudåge Riisager is certainly not the only composer who had a career in an unrelated field. He is more unusual in the recognition that he received, for his compositions and his musical advocacy, during his lifetime. After working as a civil servant for much of his life—he was educated in political science and was, in the last decade of his career, a department head in the Danish Ministry of Finance—he retired in 1950 and turned his full attention to music. This was not where it started, though, as his most productive years as a composer—and the ones chronicled here—paralleled his government career. He began his music education as a teenager. Then, before beginning his office job, he took a study trip to Paris, became a pupil of Albert Roussel—himself a latecomer to music—and Paul Le Flem, fell under the influence of Les Six, and experienced the new music of Prokofiev, Honegger, Bartók, and Stravinsky. He returned to successfully champion new music—his own and other’s— in Nielsen-besotted Denmark, achieving what near-contemporary Rued Langgaard had failed to do during the same period. Of course, Riisanger had charm and a sense of humor, and wrote beautifully crafted and easily appreciated neoclassical works inspired by his French mentors and Russian muses. Such was his success that in 1937 he was named the chairman of the Association of Danish Composers, a position he held for 25 years. In 1956 he began an 11-year tenure as director of the Royal Academy of Music in Copenhagen. He died in 1974, a revered and popular artist.


I’m not quite sure what all of this research, and a passing familiarity with the Trumpet Concertino, led me to expect, aside from formality and clarity of texture mixed with, perhaps, some French nonchalance. I was not prepared for the first three ballet suites on this release. There is an appealing surface artlessness to the Fool’s Paradise suites and the six dances from Twelve By the Mail that suggests, in their hidden sophistication, the musical revels of Les Six. They are otherwise reminiscent of English light music of the period. Riisager’s orchestrations are uniformly brilliant, his lovely melodies charming or nostalgic. Their obvious popular appeal—almost movie score-like at times—is spiced with some piquant, though subtly applied, dissonances and occasional forays into polytonality. It is all very pleasant, generally bright and cheery, though perhaps best taken in smaller doses to prevent overdose.


The Trumpet Concertino is a more substantial work, very much influenced by Stravinsky’s neoclassical style, though with little of the Russian composer’s occasionally chilly perfection. The opening and closing movements are, in fact, decidedly quirky, almost a parody of a classical concerto. The central movement is notable, however, for a depth of feeling unique among the works on this disc, though the first movement of the suite from Darduse comes close. In this latter piece, one hears the influence of Roussel’s tutelage most clearly, and more than a bit of the Impressionism that his teacher had eventually rejected. Thereafter, we are back to the lighter music, depicting cock fights and wedding processions. What sets this suite apart is the darker orchestral palette, more dissonant language—though still relatively mild—and the innovative use of chorus. The voices are used to suggest the violent wind of a Grofé-like dust storm (uncharacteristically forbidding, though all, including the chorus, ends peacefully) and the singing of the participants in the folk-inspired Women’s Dance.


Paul Snook welcomed this release in these pages ( Fanfare 21:6) in its 1998 CD incarnation. This SACD rerelease restores it to the catalog. While I cannot say I am quite as enthusiastic as my colleague—he included it on his Want List for that year—I certainly enjoyed the disc. Thomas Dausgaard and his fine Swedish orchestra are eloquent advocates. Håkan Hardenberger is luxury casting for the not terribly challenging trumpet solo, as is the superlative Ars Nova Copenhagen (as it is now known) in the choral segments. The sound is very fine in stereo, though a quick check of the multichannel layer reveals little information in the rear. Those who missed this on the first go-around will be pleased, as will students of Danish music, and fans of well-made lighter music.


FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

It is a pleasure to listen to this retrospective with three very different works from three different decades and savour the many-sidedness of Bo Holten’s compositional genius.

 

Bo Holten has composed more than 100 works including symphonies, solo concertos, works for chorus and orchestra, operas, and musicals. He has also written works for chamber ensembles, song cycles, and pieces for percussion ensemble, as well as scores for films and television series. He is regarded as Denmark’s most prolific composer of lyric theatre and is an internationally renowned conductor. This newly-recorded retrospective includes three of his most cherished concert works: a charismatic concert opera based on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, a touching song cycle to evocative poetry by Sophus Claussen and an oboe concerto inspired by the instrument’s unique lyrical capabilities. All three reveal Holten’s characteristic combination of wit and profundity, all the more so under his own musical direction.

 

REVIEW:

 

The Emperor’s New Clothes, the most recent work here, was commissioned in 2004. It is a compact score that fizzes along swiftly and the whole story is over in less than 24 minutes. The musical language is unabashedly tonal, Holten’s credo being: ‘composing without tonal harmony is like painting without colour’. He has a personal touch but borrows features from various influences: a drop of impressionism here, some minimalism there.

 

The overriding atmosphere of the Oboe Concerto is pastoral and contemplative and it certainly explores the oboe’s capacity to weave beautiful melodious threads. Here and there it is challenged by other instrumental solos and there are moments where the idyll is temporarily broken. Max Artved’s solo playing can hardly be surpassed.

 

Going further back, to 1987, we meet another woodwind soloist, in a prominent role, bassoonist Morten Østergaard in Tusmørkrets viser (Songs of Dusk), where soprano Christine Nonbo Andersen plays first fiddle. The eight songs in this song cycle follow each other seamlessly in a continuous stream.

 

 

It has been a pleasure to listen to this retrospective with three very different works from three different decades and savour the many-sidedness of Bo Holten’s compositional genius.

 

– MusicWeb International

The performances are excellent — touching, warm, well-scaled — and she has been finely recorded too.

During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the generation of Danish composers born in the 1860s started to make an impact. Among them, Fini Henriques, who had a special gift for beautiful, well-shaped melodies, and his popularity rested firmly on a generous output of single pieces, usually strung together in collections such as those presented here. Billedbogen (The Picture Book) is a collection for children and proved one of his absolute bull’s eyes, whereas Erotik (Eroticism) and Melodiske profiler (Silhouettes) see the composer exploring the world of adult life. Henriques’s best works maintain a high level with their honesty and that brilliant touch which few of his contemporaries could rival.

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REVIEW:

Fini Henriques is enjoying some time in the sun. After decades largely of neglect several new recordings have appeared recently devoted to the music of the violinist and composer. This piano disc concentrates on the years 1896 to 1911 and three particular cycles; The Picture Book, Silhouettes and Erotik.

Billedbogen, or The Picture Book (1899) is made up of 20 brief character pieces, patterned after the model of Schumann’s Album for the Young. Most hover around the minute mark but one stretches for a daring 2:40. The work’s original and more expansive subtitle speaks of ‘twenty pictures of childhood life told for young and old by Fini Henriques’ and that sums up the charm and innocent pleasure to be encountered. They are brief childhood cartes de visite summoning up domestic-sized scenes and feelings, some joyful, some scampering, others wistful or hymnal, droll or quietly sad. Henriques was 32 when he wrote the set and a mature enough composer to ensure robust characterisation.

Silhouettes (1911) was published in two books of ten and is somewhat more expansive than the earlier cycle. Whilst Claus Rollum-Larsen makes clear in his excellent booklet notes that it’s a different kind of experience from The Picture Book, adding that it inhabits a ‘different universe’ is perhaps putting things too far. It still strikes a generally Schumannesque stance and it too offers compressed character studies. It’s true, though, that the harmonies can be more advanced, even on rare occasions ambiguous, and the level of technique required surmounting some of the faster movements is considerably in advance of that needed for the 1899 cycle. The model here is more Scenes d’enfants than Album for the Young. One finds insouciant verve, jovial characterisation with the minimum of means, dapper and concise jokes, a funeral march with a flowing B section, sonorous chording, a fine romance, emotions recollected in tranquillity and an apt sense of culminatory calm.

The earliest of the cycles is the five-movement Erotik (Eroticism) of 1896. Musical eroticism was all the rage—see Grieg and Sjögren a little before Henriques—but thoughts of a smorgasbord of lust and carnality are dashed by Henriques’ very prim and proper dalliances. A charming waltz and a demure romance coupled with some folkloric hues serve instead. The other work is an isolated movement from Aphorisms (1876), a youthful piece called I Love You (Jeg elsker) written when the precious composer was just nine years old.

The performances by Christina Bjørkøe are excellent — touching, warm, well-scaled — and she has been finely recorded too. Henriques’ pieces make few real demands on the listener but offer good material for a pianist young in spirit.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

This recording features a collection of magnificent pieces from one of the golden ages of organ music, "The North German School" of the seventeenth century, which also had ramifications in Scandinavia. Five early pieces by Heinrich Scheidemann and six by his successor Nicolaus Bruhns, recorded by Professor Bine Bryndorf, offer imaginatively virtuosic playing and fervent organ chorales that make use of the whole technical and expressive range of the unique Rapha�lis Baroque organ in Roskilde Cathedral.