Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's 36-year collaboration with the legendary guitarist Andres Segovia resulted in 35 works featuring the guitar, including three concertos, several large cycles and numerous shorter pieces. Castelnuovo-Tedesco first met Segovia at a festival in Venice in 1932 and composed a new work for the legendary guitarist almost every year afterwards. Among the towering masterpieces in guitar literature is Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Platero y Yo (Platero and I), a cycle of consisting of 28 settings, arranged into four groups of seven-movement suites with a total playing time of 1 hour and 49 minutes. Originally conceived as an accompaniment for a recitation of selections from the Nobel Prize-winning Catalan poet Juan Ramon Jimenez's collection of poetic sketches of the same name, the composer gave his permission for the work to be performed without spoken text, which is how it is performed here. You can read Jimenez's texts in English translation while listening to the music and enjoying the wonderful illustrations for each movement by the award-winning artist Halfdan Pisket, especially commissioned for this recording. In preparation for bringing this masterwork to life, internationally acclaimed, multi prize-winning Danish guitarist Niklas Johansen not only studies the Spanish language to appreciate Jimenez'sprose-poems in their native language, but travelled to Spain, not far from Jimenez's hometown of Moguer. The close relationship with the language and culture has lent Johansen's interpretations a personal resonance. This album was recorded in Fredensborg Palace Chapel by the Danish masters of sound, Preben Iwan and Mette Due who beautifully captured the exceptional acoustics. We wish to express our sincere thanks to His Majesty King Frederik X, who personally granted us permission to record in Fredensborg Palace Chapel.

From Renaissance Spain to 21st century Denmark, On a Ground is a musical journey across time and traditions, centered around one of music's most universal elements: the ground bass. Celebrated recorder virtuosa Michala Petri and renowned Japanese baroque harpist Marie Nishiyama unite to explore the expressive power of this timeless form. Recorded, after a concerttour i Japan, including Suntory Hall, and just before the global lockdown at Chichibu Muse Park in Japan, the album presents intimate and evocative interpretations of works by Diego Ortiz, Alessandro Marcello, J.S. Bach, Erik Satie, and contemporary Danish composer Lars Hannibal, among others. The duo's collaboration reveals the meditative beauty and subtle intricacies of their ancient instruments. From the iconic Greensleeves and baroque gems to lyrical modern compositions, On a Ground is a graceful, immersive listening experience rooted in shared artistry and a deep respect for musical heritage. Recorded December 2019, Chichibu Muse Park, Japan in the DXD format by Hironori Kosaka (OMF).

Erik Satie's influence, once barely acknowledged, has now permeated nearly every corner of modern music. Best known for the sensual simplicity of his tender Gymnopedies, such seeming naivety masked a colorful, and frequently, complex life and artistic vision. The experimental composer John Cage famously called Satie "indispensable," citing him as a profound inspiration for his own groundbreaking work. Satie's eccentricities were part of his charm, and this whimsy often seeped into his work. In Embryons desseches (Dried Embryos), for instance, he included absurd instructions in the score, phrases like "on the tip of your tongue" or "open your head," as well as giving his works absurd titles like Effronterie and Prelude canin, gleefully written to deflate the precious seriousness of classical music traditions. In contrast, there are works like Pieces froides (1897) that anticipate the rhythmic minimalism of Philip Glass and his visionary 5 Nocturnes (1919), the final series of his cyclically organized piano pieces composed using a highly complex system rigorously guiding the interplay of melody (right hand) and harmonic accompaniment (left hand). Even today, there are many surprises to be discovered in Satie's oeuvre. This specially curated program is brilliantly realized by Christina Bjorkoe, one of Denmark's leading musicians. Much in demand as a recitalist, chamber musician, and soloist with symphony orchestras, ClassicsToday praised Bjorkoe for her dynamism and passion. Her extensive discography includes critically acclaimed recordings of works spanning the piano repertoire from Beethoven to Borup-Jorgensen.

Schubert called Winterreise a cycle of "truly terrible songs," not only for it's immersive and dark subject matter but also for the compositional process itself. It is the Mount Everest of Song cycles, a form that Schubert himself perfected. Written on poems by Wilhelm Muller (1794-1827), the songs describe a timeless tale of heartbreak: boy meets girl, girl rejects boy, boy is overcome by existential feelings and sets out on a solitary winter's journey that may result in his demise. But Schubert's genius would not allow him to be content with vapid superficialities: when Schubert set these poems to music, he was confronting his own probable fate, one of agonizing pain and isolation. An unforgettable journey through one of the most powerful musical depictions of desolation Winterreise was originally composed for the tenor voice, but it has been frequently transposed to accommodate the whole gamut of vocal tessituras. Danish bass-baritone and musical scholar Jakob Bloch Jespersen has mastered a range of repertoire from Schutz to Schierbecks and well into the 21st century. His burnished resonance and restrained sensitivity well serve this existential Schubertiade. His partner, fortepianist Sharon Prushansky brings her expertise in music of the Classical and early Romantic eras, utilizing the full panoply of pianistic Affekt available to her on Robert Brown's 2015 instrument after an original by Jakob Bertsche (ca. 1810-1815). Particularly noteworthy to this instrument are it's six pedals, which serve the purpose of changing the quality and colour of the sound, including the infamous "bassoon stop!" A third, silent partner also contributes to this extraordinary production: the haunting, sepia-toned landscapes by the great Danish photographer, Tove Kurtzweil. Together, Jakob Bloch Jespersen and Sharon Prushansky take you on an unforgettable journey through one of the most powerful musical depictions of desolation this side of Mahler!

Regarded today as the embodiment of classical music at it's most lyrical and poetic, composers have entrusted the cello with some of the loveliest melodies every penned. Yet, when it came to writing cello concertos, for most composers it was a "one and done" proposition. One of the major musi-cal monuments in the cello literature is the Schumann Concerto, composed as Schumann himself said because "there are so few works for this lovely instrument." In contrast, Soviet composer Dmitry Kabalevsky is one of the exceptions to the "one and done" rule. For a long time dismissed in the west as a mediocre apparatchik, a more evenhand-ed appraisal of Kabalevsky's work reveals a consummate craftsman with a natural gift for folk-inspired melodies and vivid orchestrations. The Cello Concerto No.2 in C minor, Op.77, owes an obvious debt to his colleague and one-time neighbor Dmitri Shostakovich and is fully deserving of be-ing more frequently played and programmed. This album marks the recording debut of the young Norwegian cellist, Theodor Lyngstad. Following studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Morten Zeuthen, Lars Anders Tomter and David Geber at the Manhat-tan School of Music in New York, Theodor has been extremely active as a chamber musician as well as earning more than a few regional and national awards along the way, most signi?cantly, the Leonie Sonning Talent Prize. In 2019, Lyngstad was appointed solo cellist in the Copenhagen Phil., the youngest musicians to attain that honor. Lyngstad is accompanied by the rising conductorial star Eva Ollikainen and the innovative Copenhagen Phil. Producer is the award-winning Daniel Davidsen.

When Danish composer Carl Nielsen finished his Third Symphony, he spoke of the first movement as "a gust of energy and life-affirmation blown out into the wide world" and called the finale of his Third Symphony "a hymn to work and the healthy activity of everyday life" - truly a sense of optimism all-too-rare for us denizens of the 21st century! So, why a four-hand arrangement of an orchestral score you ask? In the days before mechanical recordings, four hand arrangements were both a delightful social activity and an invaluable means of making large-scale works available to gifted amateurs who might not otherwise have opportunity to hear them in concert as well as promote them to conductors and concert programmers. As pianist Rikke Sandberg and Nielsen scholar Niels Bo Foltmann describe in the booklet notes, the discovery of the manuscript of Nielsen's OWN arrangement "Sinfonia Espansiva" was itself a tale of luck and diligent librarianship. Also included on this all WORLD PREMIERE RECORDING album are 2 works from Nielsen's Opera Saul & David, arranged by Nielsen for piano duet, and an oddity recently discovered in the archives of the Tivoli Amusement Park, the original four-handed sketch for the Hojby Rifle Club March composed by Nielsens' father, and arranged by Carl Nielsen/Kristoffer Hyldig. We hope that you will enjoy this first recording of Carl Nielsen's own four-handed piano music arrangement of his orchestral works, brought brilliantly to life through the musicianship and scholarship of Rikke Sandberg and Kristoffer Hyldig. Recorded by Preben Iwan in the DXD audio format (Digital eXtreme Definition, 352.8 kHz/32bit) and, available in the Dolby Atmos format on streaming platforms.

The late 17th and early 18th centuries were the Golden Age of the Recorder. Played by amateurs and professionals and admire by musical connoisseurs, the recorder was everywhere. From Italy to England, the greatest composers of the day were writing hundreds of masterworks to meet the public's demand! Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, a scrappy group of colonists were carving a new nation out of the wilderness... But where were the recorders? It is one of the great ironies of the recorder's long history, that despite being ubiquitous in nearly every American public music school program, few American composers ever explored writing for it. In order to set this egregious state of affairs to right, Michala Petri, the first Lady of the Recorder, invited four American composers to make their own discovery of just what an Old World Recorder can do! For the newest installment of her ground-breaking Concerto Project, four works have been specially commissioned to showcase the sound of the modern recorder, including the late Steven Stucky's thoroughly contemporary Etudes, Roberto Sierra's Latin-tinged Prelude, Habanera and Perpetual Motion, Harpsichord virtuoso Antony Newman's Neo-Baroque Concerto for recorder, harpsichord & strings, and Sean Hickey's boldly-wrought A Pacifying Weapon.

Classical Music

Following a series of military and economic defeats in the early 19th century, an enterprising group of teachers, pastors and writers set about to revive the Danish national spirit. Out of this environment the unique Danish tradition of the "folkeh�jskole" ("Folk High School") was born. The lofty goal of these institutions was to provide life-long popular education, a sense of national pride and civic responsibility for the common person. The movement's chief architect, the poet, philosopher, and pastor, N. F. S. Grundtvig knew full well the value of singing for creating a sense of community, so naturally, a new demand for Danish songs was created. In 1894, the first H�jskolesangbogen (High School Songbook) was published. A substantial revised edition was published in 1922, including many melodies by the famous composer Carl Nielsen. Today the collection includes 572 songs with 2.4 million copies sold and is the most popular songbook in the country to this day. The natural choice for performing this Treasury of Danish Song is, the internationally acclaimed Danish National Vocal Ensemble, the elite choir of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). With two Grammy nominations and the prestigious German ECHO Award for the album The Nightingale, (recorded with recorder virtuoso Michala Petri), the French Diapason d'Or de l'ann�e, in addition to a host of other national and international accolades, their luminous sound provides the perfect frame for these simple, heartfelt expressions of the Danish soul.

The latest release from the internationally acclaimed, multi-award-winning Danish National Vocal Ensemble marks an extraordinary milestone in the choir's history with the appointment of their new Chief Conductor, Martina Batic, and it was clear from the very beginning there was a special connection between her and the choir's singers! For her OUR Recordings debut, maestra Batic has chosen the works of two composers, both of whom may well come as revelations to music lovers. Opening the album is a selection of works from one of the musical heroes of her homeland, the Slovenian composer Uros Krek. Highly regarded in his homeland, Krek's stylistically accessible, well-crafted music is seldom heard internationally, making this musical encounter particularly valuable. A fluid pan-tonality informed the Three Autumn Songs while the other selections freely draw upon folk-influences and orthodox polyphony. As a calling card to her new Danish friends, Maestra Batic makes an extraordinary artistic statement presenting the choral music of Else Marie Pade! Rightly celebrated as one of the pioneers of electronic music, Pade also composed an extraordinary catalogue of works for acoustic instruments and voice. As beautifully score the pair of stunning works from the 1950s are, nothing could prepare us for the World Premiere Recording of Pade's extraordinary Maria (1980) scored for coloratura soprano, bass baritone, speaking choir and 7 trombones, and electronic sounds. Written as spiritual self-solace to comfort her from her trauma during the war, Maria is a modernist musical Rosary, and a masterwork of contemporary religious music. Truly, Martina Batic and the Danish National Vocal Ensemble has taken us on an amazing journey you will not want to miss! On the video from the recording, ? you will hear the Danish National Vocal Ensemble's artistic director Michael Emery, conductor Martina Batic and soprano Anna Miilmann talk about the music. Technician Mikkel Nymand talk about the new way of recording a Choir, special for Dolby Atmos.

The Danish composer Axel Borup-Jorgensen (1924-2012) was one of the 20th century's great "silent individualists." Although largely self-taught, he was the first Danish composer who attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. Without a doubt, the avant-garde of the sixties exerted a strong influence on Borup-Jorgensen's sound world, but he never embraced any specific "ism," following instead his own intuition and his extraordinary sense of organizing sound. Borup-Jorgensen's handwritten scores are of almost calligraphic quality and beauty and reveal him to be a meticulous craftsman and magician of tone color, traits on full display on this very special tribute in honor of the composer's centenary. The vast majority of his work is devoted to chamber music. Here he enjoyed the freedom and inspiration to work closely with the artists and explore new sonic possibilities of their instruments. This album is the final entry in a decade long documentation of the life and work of Axel Borup-Jorgensen's music, a project that has seen multiple critical triumphs, innovative concert installations and even an award-winning video. The animated short film for his masterpiece MARIN won OPUS Klassik AWARD as best DVD/Blu-ray as well as the Danish Radio P2 Prize for Best ALBUM. For those curious to explore the composer's unique style, this is an ideal entry point, featuring works from throughout Borup-Jorgensen's creative journey, in equally diverse and colorful arrays, including his only woodwind quintet and a work employing junk yard percussion, performed by the leading Danish chamber orchestra the acclaimed Esbjerg Ensemble. Joining the Ensemble for this recording, the 8th album in OUR Recordings series with music by Axel Borup-Jorgensen, is the award-winning pianist Kristoffer Hyldig, and special guests, all captured in crystalline clarity in the DXD audio format by producer Mette Due.

Nobody knows why Johann Sebastian Bach composed his six suites for solo cello. Nor does anybody know how it came about that the suites were soon afterwards consigned to oblivion and more than a century before a 13-year-old Spanish musical prodigy discovered a worn copy of the score in a second-hand bookstore store in Barcelona. For the next 11 years Pablo Casals practiced them every day. Finally, in 1936, he entered London's Abbey Road studios to record the second and third suites for the first time. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, Bach's cello suites have become a rite of passage for all aspiring cellists. For Henrik Dam Thomsen, solo cellist in Danish National Symphony Orchestra, the Bach cello suites are an integral part of his life, just as they are for all top-flight cellists. During the Covid shutdown, Henrik Dam Thomsen had the opportunity to immerse himself yet deeper into the Bach suites. 'When one plays the suites, one is obliged to undertake many choices with regard to all the knowledge about Baroque music now available.' Thomsen felt it was important to remain true to his own instrument and perform on his regular cello, a Francesco Ruggieri built in 1680, using modern strings, played with a conventional bow and tuned to the usual 442 Hz. These choices ensured the best homogeneity for the suites as a whole. The suites were recorded in the burnished acoustics of the Baroque Garnisons Church (Garnisons Kirke) in Copenhagen, beautifully captured in the immersive DXD format (352.8 kHz/24bit) by Mikkel Nymand. The digital release will be in Dolby Atmos.

Stephen Layton and the Danish National Vocal Ensemble put together a program representing both Francis Poulenc's secular and sacred choral music. He was a man of contradictions, often glaring ones at that; Poulenc was a declared homosexual and devout Catholic in the first half of the twentieth century. The traditionalists called him a modernist, the modernists called him old-fashioned. His music sounded so good that many people were loath to admit him to the serious musical world of Europe. Poulenc died in 1963, and the rascal half of him was there until the end: “Even though you may think the music is in bad taste, you must play your heart out all the same. I am quite aware of what I can do. And pianists must remember that you can never use too much pedal!”

Classical Music

Nordic Sound - Tribute to Axel Borup-Jørgensen was conceived as a musical memorial to this late Danish modern master. Edition Borup-Jørgensen and the composer’s daughter commissioned five leading Danish and Faroese composers, Bent Sørensen, Sunleif Rasmussen, Thomas Clausen, Mogens Christensen and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, to write a recorder concerto for Michala Petri and string orchestra. The choice of the recorder was both an outgrowth of Borup-Jørgensen’s decade’s long engagement with the instrument and as Petri’s personal tribute, who became a “second daughter” to the composer. The premieres took place at a sold-out concert at Louisiana Museum for Modern Art on November 14, 2014 by Petri and the Lapland Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Clemens Schuldt. The concert was recorded for Danish National Radio, and broadcast all over Europe. Immediately after the concert, the whole team went to Lapland to record the program. Though he left behind no disciples and established no “school”, Axel Borup-Jørgensen was a seminal figure in contemporary Danish musical life and deserving of much wider recognition.