The Danish Horn Trio on British new music festival

This year's Sounds New Festival in Canterbury offers an exclusive release concert featuring The Danish Horn Trio - Christina Åstrand (violin), Per Salo (piano) and Jakob Keiding (French horn). Apart from legendary works by Gyorgÿ Ligeti and Arvo Pärt, the trio's programme offers the UK premiere performance of a new trio by Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen - Near Still, Distant Still - which is simultaneously released on a new CD on the Danish national recording label Dacapo together with premiere recordings of works by Poul Ruders and Søren Niels Eichberg.

24 May 2011, 1 pm (concert) / 2 pm (reception)
St. Gregory's Centre for Music
North Holmes Road, Canterbury CT1 1QU

The Danish Horn Trio will also appear in the popular afternoon programme In Tune on BBC Radio 3 Monday 23 May.

Read more about the Sounds New festival on www.soundsnew.org.uk

Distant Still - Trios for violin, French horn and piano

On their new CD, the acclaimed Danish Horn Trio brilliantly displays three of today's leading Danish composers' work with the horn trio phenomenon. All three composers on this CD clearly nod to the genre's legacy by Brahms and Ligeti (both works recorded to great critical acclaim on Chandos by the Danish Horn Trio in 2002) and all are profoundly inspired by the transparent soundscape of the three fundamentally different instruments - one bowed, one blown and one struck. However, there are no direct lines connecting the three composers. Each is a distinctive artist who likes to speak with a clear, assured voice - in his own mother tongue. Thus the horn trio becomes a medium through which we can sense varied facets of Danish and international musical history.

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The Danish Horn Trio

The Danish Horn Trio has been playing a vast number of concerts since the members came together in 1997. It offers an unusual combination of instruments - violin, French horn and piano - which unites three widely different timbres in the most brilliant way. The most famous composition for these particular instruments is by Johannes Brahms, which has served as inspiration for many composers to write for the same instruments, among them György Ligeti and Poul Ruders - works which are naturally on the repertoire of The Danish Horn Trio. One of the aims of the ensemble is to open people's ears to this special sound world, and they have commissioned highly interesting works from today's leading Danish composers, the results of which now appear on the trio's second album, Distant still released by Dacapo Records.

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