Dacapo
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Schmidt: Brass Concertos / Tarkovi, Dohr, Bjørn-Larsen, Sorensen, Bellincampi, Aalborg Symphony Orchestra
Concertos from 19th-Century Denmark
Langgaard: Symphony No. 1 "Cliffside Pastorals" / Oramo, Berlin Philharmonic
Despite being eccentric and at odds with his fellow human beings for most of his life, Danish composer Rued Langgaard was convinced that his time would come – and so it did. In Langgaard’s Symphony No. 1, we find its teenage composer celebrating his love of beauty and harmony in the most hedonistic terms. With this recording the symphony sees it return home, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, the first orchestra that understood what a masterpiece perhaps the greatest talent that had ever been seen in Danish music had created.
REVIEWS:
Unjustly misunderstood, and at times even ridiculed or dismissed as an eccentric kook by critics of his day, Danish organist and composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) deserves to be ranked alongside Wagner, Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler and the like.
Brilliantly orchestrated for large orchestra, with motivic and thematic development on par with the music of Gustav Mahler [the First Symphony's] final movement alone is a revelry of ideas brought together to great effect. Seriously, if the five or so minutes near the end don't capture your full attention, and the final minute doesn't leave you slack-jawed in amazement, maybe you should check your pulse. In this live recording of the world premiere recording of the 2010 critical edition by Bendt Viinholt Nielsen, conductor Sakari Oramo and the members of the Berlin Philharmonic certainly seem to be having the time of their lives.
-- Classical Music Sentinel
Koch: Choirbook / Windekilde, DR VokalEnsemblet
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)
Abrahamsen: Schnee / Storgårds, Lapland Chamber Orchestra
A Gramophone Editor's Pick, Shortlisted for the 2022 Gramophone Awards
Recommended by MusicWeb International
A Boston Globe Best Classical Album of 2022
Hans Abrahamsen's Schnee (Snow, 2008) is a gorgeous marvel which encapsulates winter. The instrumental cycle, already a classic of the twenty-first century, comprises a set of ten canons making up an hour of ghostly, feathery music. There is no hurrying, but great depth. As Abrahamsen himself says: ‘In Schnee, a single moment is stretched as far as possible. At some point, the music disappears. There is just a breath of air left’. Founded in 1972, Lapland Chamber Orchestra is the most northerly professional chamber orchestra in Finland and indeed in the entire EU. The orchestra has 18 full-time members and its Artistic Director is conductor John Storgårds. The first ever Principal Guest Conductor, for 2019-2021, is Tomas Djupsjöbacka. Based in Rovaniemi, the orchestra is a regional orchestra that regularly tours the Province of Lapland, but also performs elsewhere in Finland and abroad. The orchestra has performed in festivals such as Savonlinna Opera Festival, Helsinki Festival, the Korsholma Music Festival and the LuostoClassic event. The latest tours abroad have taken the orchestra to Canada, Hungary, Austria, Algeria and the BBC Proms in London.
"The sounds Abrahamsen craves...translucent across a large range of actual expression, hugely complex on the page but delectably simple to the ear, are exceptionally realized and recorded here." -Gramophone
Review
...for a number of years after 1990 [the Danish composer Hans] Abrahamsen composed hardly anything, finding himself in a compositional impasse. The present work Schnee (snow), is one of those with he found his way out of this impasse, and it has been widely admired. However, Abrahamsen’s biggest success so far has been with his 2013 song cycle Let me tell you, using the words of Ophelia from Hamlet. This won the Grawemeyer Award and was voted the greatest classical composition of the twentyfirst century by a poll of critics in 2019.
During his compositional silence, Abrahamsen busied himself with arrangements of the music of other composers, including Bach. He was particularly intrigued by Bach’s set of Canons BWV 1072-8, which he arranged with the aim of repeating them again and again. This gave him the idea of writing his own music using canonic techniques. When he received a commission to write a work for a festival in 2006 he wrote what became the opening two movements of Schnee. The whole work is organised as a set of paired canons, each having an a and a b version. There are also three Intermezzi. Abrahamsen thought of each pair of canons as together forming a third, three-dimensional piece. He also thought of stereoscopic pictures, which two nearly identical pictures give the impression of depth to the viewer.
Each pair of canons is shorter than its predecessor. Furthermore, the ensemble is divided into two groups: sitting on either side of the percussionist on the left we have the strings: violin, viola, cello and one piano. On the right are the woodwind: flute (doubling piccolo and alto flute), oboe (doubling cor anglais), clarinet (doubling E flat and bass clarinet) and a second piano. These are used in contrasting ways. There are also strong contrasts in pace. In the three intermezzi, the wind and stringed instruments are tuned down slightly, creating interference patterns with the pianos, which have normal tuning.
So much for the technicalities of the work, though one could go on a good deal longer about them. What does it sound like? Well, it begins very quietly, so quietly in fact that at first I thought there was something wrong with my equipment. There are very high violin notes and then a melody picked out on the piano. The second set of canons moves rapidly, like walking through swirling snow. The fourth set uses the same sleigh-bells which Mozart used in his Sleigh Ride (Die Schlittenfahrt) from his Three German Dances K. 605. The fifth set uses the device Bach exploited in Contrapunctus 13 from The Art of Fugue of two pieces, one of which is the inversion of the other. At the end, the music just disappears. The work is completely absorbing and gripping and creates a unique atmosphere.
It is beautifully recorded; I was listening in ordinary two-channel stereo, but this is a SACD and should sound even better in that medium. There are helpful sleevenotes, in English and Danish, from which I have borrowed, and altogether this is a memorable disc.
--MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)
Romantic Violin Concertos / Christina Astrand, Et Al
Recording information: Tampere Concert Hall (10/14/2008-10/21/2008).
Gade: Erlkönigs Tochter
Horneman: Orchestral Works / Gustavsson, Danish National Symphony Orchestra

Some of this music has been recorded before, by BIS, but the overture and the complete Kalanus Suite aren't otherwise available. Christian Horneman (1840-1906) wrote comparatively little music, most of it for the theater, and all of it (that I've heard anyway) is of high quality. The idiom is late romantic, the melodic invention consistently attractive, the scoring colorful and ear-catching. The music leaves you wanting more. The Gurre-Suite follows the same basic story as Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, except that in this version Tove gets locked in a sauna and steamed to death rather than poisoned by the jealous queen. The four concise movements consist of an overture, a love scene, Tove's funeral procession, and a brief Entr'acte as a finale.
The other major work here is the suite from Kalanus, in five relatively substantial movements--but arguably the most fun comes from the two dances (of satyrs and a bacchanal, respectively) in "Contest with the Muses". Trust me, it's all good, and the performances are absolutely terrific, with Johannes Gustavsson encouraging his players to give their very best. Dacapo's SACD engineering is also excellent. It may be that Horneman's entire life's work can be summed up on a single CD (not necessarily a bad thing in these days of mega-boxed sets), but it's one you won't want to miss.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Buxtehude: Scandinavian Cantatas / Hillier, Theatre Of Voices

As the notes point out, Buxtehude "never held a position that required him to compose vocal music," but as these works show, he was no stranger to the practice, writing for the voice with adept concision that shows a remarkably wide expressive range and engaging tunefulness. The works are not complex by any means, and employ a minimal contingent of strings and/or organ just sufficient to support and add color to the vocal parts, and to supply textural and occasional imitative or contrasting thematic interest.
These little cantatas--each lasting between five and eight minutes--feature four or five voices (in one case, only a solo singer), with texts in Latin or (in two instances) Swedish, drawn from the Psalms or religious poetry. In addition to the cantatas--and a welcome organ Praeludium and Passacaglia--we hear the Kyrie and Gloria of a Missa alla brevis, Buxtehude's "only strictly liturgical work"; the extraordinary and delightfully surprising chromatic passages in the final few pages of the Gloria make this one of the program's more memorable--and immediately repeatable--moments.
Paul Hillier's one-voice-to-a-part configuration works very well for these pieces whose style often seems closer to the earlier 17th-century Italian madrigal than to northern European church music of the late 1600s (the opening vocal flourishes and overall expressive character of "Ecce nunc benedicite Domino", for instance). All of these singers are excellent, but among them Else Torp is particularly fine in her solo-cantata "Att du Jesu vill mig höra" (That you will hear me, Jesus). The instrumental ensemble and continuo playing, as well as the solo-organ renditions by Buxtehude expert Bine Bryndorf, are equally stylish and assured--and everything is recorded in state-of-the-art sound, from the church of St. Mary's, Elsinore (Helsingør), where Buxtehude once served as organist, and who played the (now restored) instrument heard here.
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com
Pade: The Orchestral Album / Gustafsson, Malmö Opera Orchestra
This album is nothing short of a sensation: it shows Else Marie Pade (1924–2016) in a hitherto unknown role as an orchestral composer. Although these are only a few works, their artistic weight and the quality and integrity she brings to her orchestral works, provide ample reason to challenge her established image. With this album, it will be equally legitimate to label her as an 'acoustic' composer as it has been to call her an 'electronic' composer in the past.
Josefine Opsahl: Atrium
Atrium, Danish cellist and composer Josefine Opsahl's (b. 1992) debut for Dacapo Records, is a strikingly original statement, focusing on her own music. The title has two definitions: one biological, one architectural. Out of their collision, Opsahl draws a reverberating series of dualities: soft/hard, organic/manufactured, natural/cultural. These are expressed most fundamentally in her distinctive instrumental set-up of cello and live electronics, which allows her to build entire orchestras of electronically modified and duplicated cellos live and in response to her acoustic playing.
Holten: Schlagt sie tot! / Ringborg, Malmö Opera Orchestra, Malmö Opera Chorus
| 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. |
Gudmundsen-Holmgreen: Complete String Quartets, Vol. 1 / Nordic String Quartet
Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (1932–2016) wrote string quartets all his life. Fourteen in all; the first three dating from 1959, the last ones from 2013. Launching its complete cycle of Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s string quartets, the Nordic String Quartet here presents the first six quartets: Honesty meets schoolboy pranks, obstinacy meets doubt, yes meets no – Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s string quartets are full of such clashes. We start at one point and end at a totally different one. Never fusty, often entertaining, always adamant. Nordic String Quartet is a young, highly skilled quartet, formed by professor Tim Frederiksen, and thus following the successes of the Danish String Qartet and Nightingale String Quartet. The album is the first in a series of three with the complete string quartets by Gudmundsen-Holmgreen- all in all 14 string quartets. All works on this first album are world premiere recordings.
Kuhlau: Works for Solo Piano, Vol. 2 / Bodendorff
NIELSEN: Sommerfugledalen
Gade: Piano Works / Shirinyan
His instrument may have been the violin, but Niels W. Gade (1817-90) was a great admirer of piano virtuoso Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann. In fact, the great Danish Romantic composer left behind a collection of piano works that inspired both professionals and amateurs. Breathing new life into a selection of these, Armenian-Danish pianist Marianna Shirinyan performs Gade's poetic "Aquarelles," the almost orchestral "Sonata in E minor", four chopin-esque "Fantasy Pieces" and the little "Chanson danoise", here in its first recording.
Abrahamsen: Works for Wind Quintet / Ensemble MidtVest
Nordic composer Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952) has recently come into the public eye for winning the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in 2015, and then the Grawemeyer Award in 2016. Two of his earliest works are featured on this recording: Landskaber, composed in 1972, and Walden, composed in 1978. Along with these original works, this programme includes two arrangements by Abrahamsen, of Schumann’s Kinderszenen, and Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin.
Sørensen: L’Isola della Citta / Saraste, Danish National Symphony
Every sound in Bent Sørensen's music has been considered with the greatest care and refinement. His quietly spoken universe incorporates loneliness, nostalgia and a feeling of loss and leave-taking. His triple concerto, L’Isola della Città (2015), has a purity that makes it one of Sørensen’s most immediate and gripping orchestral works. As he has said, 'this music unfolds at night, as most of my music does, because it was written at night’. The concerto's solo parts are performed by Trio con Brio Copenhagen who has played Sørensen's music extensively. Sørensen’s Second Symphony (2019) is a ‘classic’ symphony. The work dives into the resonance of music’s history: the imagination showers itself in melodies, sounds and structures while at the same time, from a rational perspective, it can be seen both from outside and from a distance.
REVIEWS:
Sørenson is a composer whose pieces strike me as truly dreamlike. There is often a core of something familiar, tonal, pleasing at its heart, but it is also layered over with distortions and inflections that make it less familiar. One might say that it takes something attractive and comfortable and renders it uncanny.
The two works here fall very much into this description. L’Isola della Cittá is a sort of concerto grosso for piano trio and orchestra. It is more intimate, poetic, and the contrasts and juxtapositions are more extreme, even though they are subtly modulated. (The “island” of the title is the composer’s home in Copenhagen; one senses the world constantly encroaching on the precious quiet of the creative space). The symphony, not surprisingly, is more abstract, its rhetoric more forceful. But its meaning remains elusive—as I assume is the composer’s intent. And that’s a positive.
This is music that projects genuine mystery, but it’s a mystery that comes out of the familiar. While Postmodernist, it doesn’t engage the more “classic” Postmodern practice of quotation and pastiche. Everything is a very personal creation of this composer.
I note that Sørenson won the prestigious Grawemeyer Award a few years back (for L’Isola), and now I can see why. Highly recommended.
-- Fanfare
Although Sørenson is often regarded as an introspective writer there is much here that is bold and exciting. This is a welcome release of world premiere recordings of the title track (L’Isola della Citta) and his Second Symphony.
-- Lark Reviews
King Frederik IX Conducts the Royal Danish Orchestra & Danish National Symphony
Enna: Violin Concerto; Symphony No. 2 / Gustafsson, Bogotá Philharmonic
On this newest endeavour, the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Joachim Gustafsson, turns its attention towards Danish composer August Enna (1859–1939) with renderings of two of his charming orchestral works. Traces of several elements from Enna’s musical life converge in the Violin Concerto: his background as a violinist and his deep connection to opera meet the tradition of Nordic national romanticism. While Symphony No. 2 may be considered conservative for its era, it is abundantly rich in its continuous melodic flow, creating an immediately impactful experience.
Frandsen: Songs
Danish composer John Frandsen (b. 1956) is well known for his interpretation of texts. This new release collects some of his most evocative solo song cycles with a myriad of poems set to this music. Four of Scandinavia’s most promising young vocalists are featured on this album, including Lise Davidsen and the composer’s own son, Morten Grove Frandsen.
J.P.E. Hartmann - Key Masterpieces
J.P.E. Hartmann (1805-1900) composed music throughout eight decades and was greatly admired by Grieg, and a stylistic inspiration for Nordic national romanticism. Hartmann took centre stage in the wake of the old Danish masters Weyse and Kuhlau and became the prime exponent of Danish ‘national’ music. The finest examples of this can be found in among other works the remarkable piano sonatas, the masterly theatre overtures and the opera Little Kirsten, judged at the time to be the very essence of Danishness.
