The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and Grete Pedersen have made acclaimed recordings of music spanning a millennium – from chants by Hildegard of Bingen (1098 –...

The Norwegian Soloists’ Choir and Grete Pedersen have made acclaimed recordings of music spanning a millennium – from chants by Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) to the most recent compositions – and in styles ranging from folk songs to Bach motets and Berio’s Coro. On their new album, the focus is on contemporary Norwegian music, with three works which all originate in words and challenge the relation between language and music. For his Lament from 2015, Lars Petter Hagen has chosen to set a short text by E. E. Cummings, written when the poet was 6 years old. The words of the poem are split up and stretched out into pulsating waves of grief, at once mysterious, beautiful and painful. Awarded the Nordic Council Music Prize in 2018, Muohta (Snow) consists of 18 sections, each setting a single word in Sámi, the language of the indigenous people in the north of Norway. The words are all related to snow, and composer Nils Henrik Asheim has found inspiration in how indigenous peoples live with nature, as opposed to seeking to control it.