This recording is the culmination of a process spanning several years, in which the performers delved into the works of composers found right in their own backyard. The facts are that all but one of the composers on this recording were born in the 1940s (the exception here is Mark Adderley, who was born in 1960). All of the composers are Norwegian, except for Anders Eliasson from Sweden and Adderley, who is half English, half Swedish, and has lived in Norway since 1981. Three of the composers have worked as professors at the Norwegian Academy of Music, an institution that has been at the forefront of the education of Norwegian composers since its establishment in 1973. These facts have not in themselves been instrumental in the choice of repertoire; rather it was more important that the works were composed for saxophone and piano, and that we as performers believed that they were works that deserved to be realized into sound and given attention beyond their catalog listings in various music libraries. The works become audible and alive through such a recording, rather than existing only as visual notations in the composers’ manuscripts. There is so much fantastic music created in Norway and the Nordic countries that we wanted to bring some of it to light in order to make musicians and audiences, potentially all over the globe, more aware of the high quality of works from these countries. The recording also documents some of the different artistic directions and variations to be found among Norwegian and Nordic composers around the turn of the millennium.– Lars Lien

The process behind this work originates from when Oslo Cathedral commissioned a large scaled work by Nils Henrik Asheim for the inauguration of the church's new main pipe organ in 1998. The composer suggested including a choir to create a cycle of texts from the Book of Psalms, and the Oslo Cathedral Choir were more than willing to participate, with their dedication to the piece being integral to the work's development. Organ builders Ryde & Berg made both the main organ (with 53 voices) and the choir organ (16 voices), with the combination of the two becoming central to the concept of the work. The two instruments bathe the room in an immersive soundscape, with the choir representing the voice inside this. The composer himself chose a selection of lines taken from 21 hymns, with the view to creating a holistic narrative through use of contrasts. Five “Allelujah” movements for organ complete each of the sections of the work. In the 1998 version, these were improvised movements for solo organ, but in the revised version from 2019 the movements were re-composed as organ duos. The titles of these five movements are taken from Psalm 150,v.1–3.

HVOSLEF Piano Trio. VALEN Piano Trio. EGGE Piano Trio • Valen Tr • LAWO 1037 (67:55)


The Valen Trio’s CD covers the music of three generations of Norwegian composers, two of whom wrote in the 20th century: Fartein Valen (1887–1952) and Klaus Egge (1906–1979). The third, Ketil Hvoslef (b. 1939), not only composed in the past century, but also continues his work today. Although their works are not in date order on the disc, at some point, you might want to listen to them that way in order to get a better understanding of the progression.


Born in Stavanger, Fartein Valen studied organ before moving to Berlin in the hope of studying with Max Bruch. There, he worked on tonal and atonal counterpoint that involved dissonance. His music eventually bore similarities to the works of Bach and Schoenberg. Glenn Gould, who admired Valen’s compositions, found them distinctive and said, “For the first time in many years I have found a looming personality in the 20th century’s music.” For those of us listening in 2014, Valen is an interesting way station on the musical timeline. The Valen Trio—composed of Ricardo Odriozola, violin; John Ehde, cello; and Einar Røttingen, piano—play his rhythmic, energetic music with love and great attention to detail. Their excellent rendition of the composer’s work transports us back to the first part of the previous century when his kind of writing was revolutionary. Egge, who wrote in the middle of the century, was first inspired by folk music and wrote in a tonal language for some years before he began to explore atonalism. Having become a student of Valen, he was present at the premiere of the latter’s Trio. His works show the progress of Norwegian music at this time and they are of both musical and historical importance. The Valen Trio plays his op. 14 Trio with the stylistic knowledge that comes from a serious study of the composer and knowledge of the culture in which he worked.


The most modern composer whose music is recorded on this disc is Ketil Hvoslef. His Trio was first heard in 2011. Like Valen, Hvoslef first studied organ in Norway. Later, he moved to Stockholm and then to London to study composition. His compositional style has often varied with the makeup of the group for which he was writing. Beginning as a neo-Classicist, he has developed a personal musical language that shows his rhythmic ingenuity. The Trio begins with sustained string tones and rhythmic incursions by the piano. It continues with a dialogue between the strings and the piano followed by a languid slow section. For the Finale, Hvoslef returns to rhythm and music that makes the listener want to dance. The sound on this recording is well balanced among the three instruments. The ambience will make the listener feel that he or she is sitting in an appropriately sized hall for chamber music while hearing the Valen Trio play this music. Since this CD takes the listener on a historic tour of Norwegian chamber music, it will probably be of greatest interest to lovers of trios and the music of Scandinavia.


FANFARE: Maria Nockin

The Norwegian early music ensemble Barokkanerne offers a new CD on the LAWO Classics label devoted to the music of Georg Philipp Telemann, one of music history's most productive composers! Leading the ensemble is Kati Debretzeni (concertmaster of Sir John Elliot Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists).

In his ninth and tenth of a total of fourteen releases of Bach’s collected organ works, Kare Nordstoga pulls together much of what was not collected from the composer’s side- preludes and fugues. The double form prelude (or toccata) and fugue has been an established form of composition since the 1600s. The North Germans Dietrich Buxtehude and Georg Bohm made a powerful contribution to this contrastive style in which the freer first part and the more rigorous second part are united in a dynamic whole. The young Johann Sebastian harvested significant impressions from these two composers during his time in Lubeck and Luneburg, and this album was recorded in Luneburg. Kare Nordstoga (b. 1954) studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Following his debut in 1978, he continued his studies in London and he was for a time organist at Ullern Church, before coming to Oslo Cathedral in 1984. He has also been associated with the Norwegian Academy of Music, where he was appointed professor in 1994.

REVIEW:

Nordstoga displays a fine architectural grasp of the works and builds them with convincing inevitability. Integrity is the hallmark of all his playing: He is careful but not cautious; deliberate and determined but not dragging and dour; sure-handed and solid but not showy or superficial. The only thing I do not find here is the uniquely electrifying excitement that Ton Koopman brings to his complete cycle. But if, unlike me, your taste in Bach organ performances runs more towards the older tradition of stately grandeur, then definitely consider investing in Nordstoga.

– Fanfare

The Norwegian Wind Ensemble
Mark Bennett - conductor
Nordic Voices
Arrangements by Stian Aareskjold

The point of departure for the Norwegian Wind Ensemble’s new CD is the meeting of serious European music and indigenous traditional music of the 17th and 18th centuries. The result is a vibrant mixture of lovely music, spirited dance rhythms, and Latin American temperament. The Norwegian Wind Ensemble is a professional orchestra based in Halden. With its 280-year history, it is Norway’s oldest orchestra.

All the ''pigeonholing'' and talk about genres in our day and age has led to confusion in one or another of the camps: is it jazz, is it classical, or what actually is it? With this clearly in mind, we - the classical singer and the jazz pianist - have ventured together in Terra Nova's tonal world in an attempt to create our own ''universe''. Jan Gunnar Hoff is a jazz pianist, but he composes in a style that overlaps with what can be defined as classical, with its fine melodies and melodious improvisations, and with its singable compositions. We wish to give you a genre-free musical experience, in which the music elevates the text, and in which the two of us, each in our way, bring the essence, melancholy and beauty of the music into this indefinable universe of text and melody.

Also available: Scriabin: Symphony No. 2 & Piano Concerto / Petrenko and Scriabin: Symphony No. 1 & Prometheus / Petrenko

This CD release marks the start of a creative partnership between the Oslo Philharmonic and LAWO Classics. Alexander Scriabin’s deep immersion in esoteric philosophy and related spiritual awakening became integral to his art. The Russian composer’s initial conservative musical language evolved in the early 1900s and opened up to daring harmonic territories. His art was influenced in part by his reading of Helena Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, a syncretic blend of ancient wisdom, occult practices, mysticism, and critical reactions to Darwin and modern "materialist" science.

-----

REVIEWS:

Petrenko shows an excellent grasp of each symphony's dramatic trajectory, and a broader than usual awareness of the creative legacy within which Scriabin worked.

– BBC Music Magazine

Petrenko’s debut disc with his new Oslo band should not be overlooked: Scriabin’s virtuosic writing holds no terrors for them, and they wallow in the “Voluptés” of No 3’s central movement with ravishing transparency. The Poem of Ecstasy is heady stuff, brilliantly played.

– Sunday Times (UK)

Classical Music

The project "Ketil Hvoslef's chamber music" was initiated in 2012 by violinist Ricardo Odriozola and pianist Einar Røttingen, both with backgrounds spanning many years of cooperation with the composer. The catalyst for the idea was the fact that most of Hvoslef's chamber works had not been recorded and that, in view of their consistently high quality, deserved larger international attention and exposure. Thus, the idea to document all 38 works on an album arose, and thr ecord company Lawo Classics agreed to come onboard. Collaboration with the performers is instrinsic to Hvoslef's work as a composer. By trying out his ideas in dialogue with the players, a higher refinement of the details is achieved and the score is altered accordingly. This is an important part of the compositional process. This album marks the third in the series.

Today it is not unusual to use a Baroque model when building a new organ. Likewise, interest in Romantic organs has increased in recent years. The new organ in Sofienberg Church, built by Hermann Eule Orgelbau, is inspired by the sound of nineteenth-century German organs. As a new instrument, it is unique in the Norwegian context. Indeed, it is the sound of the new Eule organ that has determined the choice of repertoire for organist Halgeir Schiager’s new release, “God Save the King”- the first recording made on this magnificent instrument. The works on this album are variations on familiar melodies, among them, the American and German national anthems. They were written by composers who are largely forgotten today, but who were regarded as important in their own time. The album includes a number of first recordings.

A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month

Marianne Beate Kielland’s discography has grown rapidly since I first reviewed a collection of Bach cantatas a dozen years ago. Recitals with Grieg, Elling, Schumann and Mozart have come my way for review, the latter was one of my Recordings of the Year 2017 (review). Thus it was only a matter of time before she would tackle one of the real summits in the song repertoire, Gustav Mahler’s three song cycles. They have been recorded innumerable times and it seems that they invariably inspires the singers to surpass themselves, both in pure vocalism and interpretation of the texts. The Mozart recital mentioned above was titled “Whispering Mozart” since Ms Kielland and her sensitive accompanist Nils Anders Mortensen had opted for uncommonly intimate readings of the songs, as though they were performed before a small group of listeners gathered in someone’s living room. There is something of the same approach here. All three cycles are most often heard with orchestral accompaniment and the Rückert songs and Kindertotenlieder (also to Rückert texts) were conceived that way. The presence of an orchestra almost by definition excludes close intimacy. Certain singers still manage to communicate closeness when allied with a sensitive conductor. The best example is Janet Baker and John Barbirolli in the famous recordings from the 1960s. Through shunning the orchestra Marianne Beate Kielland can scale down to the same whispering intimacy as on the Mozart album at the expense of the orchestral colours. The piano, exquisitely played by Nils Anders Mortensen, provides something similar to a black-and-white photograph or etching, which still has marvellous nuances.

That is immediately noticeable in the five Rückert songs. Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft! is careful, delicate, restrained, light; Liebst du um Schönheit restrained and extremely inward with exquisite nuances, superbly adjusted to the sparse accompaniment; in Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder the sound is fuller but the lightness is retained, as is the sense of folk song; Ich bin der Welt – my personal favourite among the Mahler songs – is utterly sensitive and in the last stanza the line “und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet” is so soft and dreamy, lingering …. Um Mitternacht is a grander song and the manner of her reading is grander with glowing tone, absolutely steady and sooo beautiful.

Kindertotenlieder, the darkest of song cycles, is permeated by inwardness and pensiveness. The piano accompaniment makes the songs more transparent than the orchestral version. Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen is particularly touching in Marianne Beate Kielland’s reading. The concluding song In diesem Wetter is the dramatic outbreak that literally cries out for the orchestral background but the piano here thunders convincingly in the opening and the reading as a whole is quite overwhelming. I still, when writing this, feel the shivers it provoked. At the same time the simple beauty of the final stanzas is like balm for the soul. The ultimate reading of Kindertotenlieder for me is Brigitte Fassbaender’s whom I heard in the Royal Castle in Stockholm many years ago. She sang the whole cycle with closed eyes and with an intensity that was almost unbearable. That was of course the orchestral version, but Marianne Beate Kielland comes very close to Fassbaender in her more small-scale reading.

The same commitment and insight is also apparent in Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, which was originally conceived for voice and piano and several years later was scored for orchestral forces. That version was first performed in 1896 and there seems to be no documentation that the voice-and-piano version was ever performed before that. There is again a captivating simplicity about Ms Kielland’s readings also here, a simplicity that doesn’t exclude depth. The opening of Ging heut’ Morgen has a kind of jubilant rusticity that reminds the listener that the songs were inspired by Des Knaben Wunderhorn, even though the words are Mahler’s own. Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer is swift and rhythmically intense in the opening, but the second stanza, Wenn ich in den Himmel seh’ is soft and inward while O Weh! when it is repeated is heartrendingly intense. Die zwei blauen Augen is so sad with the last stanza, Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum, magically sung. Whispering Mahler, indeed!

I have lots of marvellous Mahler recording on my bending shelves, recordings that I will not voluntarily be separated from. This latest disc will now join those with Janet Baker, Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Thomas Hampson and several others. I urge readers to follow my example.

– MusicWeb International (Göran Forsling)

The period instrument ensemble Barokkanerne presents Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in a debut recording with LAWO Classics. Led by Alfredo Bernardini, the group performs ground-breaking symphonies and concertos of this ardent next-eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The music spans more than 30 years of C.P.E. Bach’s life as a composer - from his engagement as court musician in Berlin to his last years as director of music in Hamburg. This is Sturm and Drang and Enlightenment at its fieriest. Reason and feelings are distilled in a contrast-laden musical universe - Empfindsamkeit, sensitivity - in which humans and things human are the new wine of the age. Italian baroque oboe specialist Alfredo Bernardini, one of the world’s leading performers of early music, has garnered a number of international prizes for his many recordings. He is, among other things, the founder and artistic director of the ensemble ZEFIRO. Principal harpsichordist Christian Kjos is a sought-after performer who as a member of the quintet Ensemble Meridiana has won a number of prizes at international early music competitions.

Barokkanerne, which debuted in the summer of 1989, has remained a Norwegian early music ensemble with an extensive concert schedule - including its own concert series in Oslo. The orchestra is a frequent guest at festivals throughout Norway and has been involved in a number of productions for Norwegian Radio and Television (NRK). The album was recorded in East Fredrikstad Church. - LAWO

"A lovely debut album by Benjamin Isachsen. We are offered a brilliantly clear boy soprano voice to guide us through a broad spectrum of music. The voice has many dimensions, and there is a vulnerability in it, as though Isachsen and all around him are aware of its impermanence."

-- Erik Steinskog, Bergens Tidende

"Something as rare as a Norwegian boy soprano, a piercingly pure boy soprano. The recording reveals above all just how vulnerable the vibratoless voice of a child is. In this sense it also is a manifestation of the CD's existential title, which expresses so well what the recording is all about. One would be hard pressed to find purer intonation."

-- Hroar Klempe, Adresseavisen

This new release is a unique coupling of two orchestral works on the same subject (Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), composed 240 years apart. It is incredibly interesting to check how a modern instrument orchestra adapts to play music of seventeenth and then twentieth centuries. Virtuosic playing and musicological approach go hand in hand in this recording. First performed in 1670 at the Chateau de Chambord in the Loire Valley, Moliere and Lully's Le bourgeois gentilhomme is a stage piece that combines spoken or sung comedy with dance. The work was a precursor to the tragedie-lyrique, and played an important role in establishing the form of French opera. In October 1911, Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal decided on the subject of their next project. Hofmannsthal suggested that they make a two-act adaptation of Le bourgeois gentilhomme. The play would be performed with new instrumental music by Strauss, and the concluding ballet entertainment, the Ballet des Nations, of Moliere's original would take the form of a new opera, Ariadne auf Naxos, to be created by Hofmannsthal and Strauss.