Delineations
of new Danish Music
The five composers selected for this CD release
represent very individual musical -languages. And although their personal
musical projects are, indeed, individually original they nonetheless exhibit
some conspicuous similarities and cross-references. Herman D. Koppel's
stringent composition is a profound and elegant expression of rhythmically
framed music, recalling the musical world of the young Per Nørgård, who
endeavoured in the 1950s to define a unique Nordic tone to succeed that of
Sibelius. Although their approaches vary greatly, Niels Rosing-Schow, Anders
Nordentoft and Per Nørgård are closely related in their fusion of formal pulse
and vibrant poetry. Furthermore, Koppel and Rosing-Schow are strikingly similar
in their projection of a kind of elegant, cool distance. And what unites the
composers is their courage to execute idiosyncrasies with conviction, even
embracing the vulnerability inherent in simplicity. Their music seems in constant
search of new avenues of expression and you clearly sense the composers' curiosity
and liberating openness towards tradition and the ruling spirit of the day.
Niels Rosing-Schow's ‘E Rigidis' from
1981 is, as implied by the title (‘Out of -Rigidity'), a journey away from
rigid rules to a place of intuitive insight. The musical idiom is simple and
direct and notably employs a succession of mechanical figures that slowly
evolve, retrace their steps and engage in mirror reflection. The music develops
in a way that evokes an image of the then 27-year-old composer placing a
handful or two of toy building bricks at the beginning of his score - a deep
eruption, a persistent note on the piano, etc - in order to create a sweep
through a totality of notes and allow the austere architecture to dissolve into
fluid musical form over the course of 15 minutes. For the composer, ‘E Rigidis'
marks a personal departure from a mechanical ‘New Simplicity' to a more
fragmented kind of modernism - a theoretical journey that is embodied in the
music.
The two short pieces by Per Nørgård
offer rare insight into the now 77-year-old composer's early career.
‘Diptychon' (Diptych) from 1954 is one of his very first works, and ‘Fragment
V' from 1961 marks the first composition in which he unfolds his celebrated
infinity row within a regular and easily comprehended semitone scale. In all
its simplicity ‘Diptychon' displays two fundamentally different tableaux: the
first coloured by meandering poetry, the second empowered by energised rhythm.
Indeed, the composition reflects the two-panel altarpiece to which the title
refers. It is as if Nørgård wanted to accentuate his musical idiom by shaping
two diametrically different objects from the same material. In the first
section the notes (including delicate harmonics) are strung together to create
lengthy melodies. In the second section - that is, before the conclusion sees
the two worlds coalesce - everything is transformed into individual musical
points and distinct musical figures presented with vigorous intensity.
In ‘Fragment V', Nørgård has now reached
a new understanding. As the title implies, music can no longer be seen as
integrated entities, rather it is defined with a modern approach as small
pieces and fractions that offer a glimpse of reality, which is itself
fragmented. Fragmentation, however, is no modern invention. Around 1800, German
romanticists saw fragmentation as a genre that opened the door to abbreviated
visions of universal truths. Nørgård shared this kind of romanticism. "How am I
to hold my soul so that it does not touch yours?" - Nørgård has these words
from Rainer Maria Rilke's impassioned Liebes-Lied printed above the notes of the violin, as it sets out to meander
through a musical landscape of sombre, beautiful and deeply original melodies
set against a delicate tapestry of piano play.
The two
works by Poul Ruders were both composed around the millennium year - one on
either side of it - and in both compositions the violin appears as the
instrument of romance. ‘Three Tiny Pieces for Great Friends' consists of three
two-minute pieces with the evocative subtitles ‘Romanza', ‘Passione' and ‘Aria'
in which the violin appears as the constant source of enticing phrases that
come in waves, much akin to the performance of a violinist in a southern
European restaurant who goes from table to table to entertain one romantic date
after another. The piano, on the other hand, offers commentary on the fiddler's
act: short, abrupt interpolations before leaping into the ‘Passione' with aggressive,
full-blown chords. However, in ‘Aria', which is coloured by sunset mood, the
violin drains the melodies of their momentum. This sentiment is echoed by the
piano from which delicate musical tropes emanate. The ‘great friends' referred
to in the title are, incidentally, violinist Rebecca Hirsch and pianist Rolf Hind,
who performed the world premiere of the piece in 1999. Ruders' second
composition on this release has a somewhat different raison d'être. ‘Bel Canto'
was composed for the Carl Nielsen Violin Competition in Odense in 2004 to
challenge the contestants into offering their most resolved and beautiful
performance.
Although his musical idiom differs
entirely from that of Rosing-Schow, Anders Nordentoft in his juvenile work ‘Two
movements' from 1978 employs mechanical repetition to instil coherence and
structure. The underlying mood is poetic and dreamy, interrupted by a brutally
punkish melodic mass that tears the listener away from its wondrous melodies.
Nordentoft's composition is reminiscent of Nørgård's ‘Diptychon' and shares the
same clear division between intimacy and rhythmic pulse. Unlike Nørgård,
Nordentoft refrains from relegating the polar opposites to different movements
but weaves in and out between ecstatic dream and shattered reality. Note
repetitions are a constant feature - in the first movement almost as a
counterpart to Chopin's famous ‘Raindrop Prelude'. And they persist whether the
music is soft-toned as satin or raw-edged as leather. The music thus becomes a
very liberating 1970s-style commentary on the post-war discussions of the
validity of individual scales and on the rigid ban on major and minor. To
Nordentoft, what makes a decisive difference is less a question of the exact
nature of what it is he is working with and more a question of his intuitive
approach when shaping it.
Herman D. Koppel's ‘Ternio' from 1951
exhibits some of the same rhythmic clarity found in Nørgård's ‘Diptychon', but
with an underpinning notion that is perhaps even more pronounced and,
incidentally, far more traditional. The three movements (ternio is Latin for ‘three things together') are fast-slow-fast with a
comprehensive rhythmic idea that shapes the music with surgical precision and
gives the first movement, especially, a fascinatingly pure expression. The slow
pace of the second movement never really becomes emotional in style, and not
before the final movement does Koppel let loose and allow the music to really
go wild. In this his music recalls the ‘New Objectivity' (Neue
Sachlichkeit) that emerged in the late 1920s in
central European art and music.
Henrik Friis, 2009