Anders Koppel
Anders Koppel is
to a rare degree a composer of his time. With one leg solidly planted in the
classical European musical tradition and the other in world music and
rock/jazz, Anders Koppel's activities as a composer can be seen as one long
continuous effort to combine these cultures in a contemporary musical idiom.
This has resulted in a long succession of original works, all typified by a
special ability to communicate emotions and energy strongly and directly
between musicians and audience. In short, humanist music that brings people
closer to one another.
Right from the beginning music has played
a major role in Anders Koppel's life. As a child he learned to play the piano
and clarinet, sang in the Copenhagen Boys' Choir, and as the son of the
composer and pianist Herman D. Koppel (1908-1998) he became familiar at an
early age with reading scores and instrumentation. At the same time Anders
Koppel (born in 1947) took an active part in the musical experiments that were
part of the youth revolt of the 1960s and 1970s. In the years 1967-74, as the
organist and lyric-writer, he was one of the bearing members of Savage Rose,
one of the most prominent and innovative groups on the Danish rock scene. With
a sophisticated sound idiom coloured by extensive use of keyboard instruments,
Anders Koppel was already then breaking down the boundaries among the
traditional genres. Since Anders Koppel left Savage Rose in 1974, he has
increasingly immersed himself in the creation of contemporary composition
music.
Intensive work with film, theatre and
ballet music has been an important precondition for his development as a
composer, since many of the more than 200 films and productions for which
Anders Koppel has written music have led to composition studies in a particular
musical style or mood. As a consequence of this Anders Koppel today has an
unusual ability to create visually evocative stories in music, both in
chamber-music miniatures and in large dramatic concert pieces.
Alongside his work as a composer Anders
Koppel has been an active musician in among other configurations the group
Bazaar, which for over thirty years has cultivated a unique expressive style
characterized by improvisation, music from the Balkan region and Anders
Koppel's own compositions. Since 1992 the trio Koppel, Andersen, Koppel with
his son Benjamin Koppel (saxophone) and Jacob Andersen (percussion) has also
played an important role. His experience as a performing artist constantly reminds
Anders Koppel of what it takes to make a piece of music relevant to an
audience. That is why Anders Koppel's music is also extroverted in the best
sense of the word. Rather than cultivating a special compositional technique,
his music often has an undogmatic, flowing character based on a classical view
of tonality and the natural expressiveness of the individual instrument.
Anders Koppel's musical vocabulary is
extremely broad, encompassing among other things a fondness for Latin American
styles such as tango, samba and Cuban music. This can already be heard in his
debut work for a classical ensemble: a piano quintet from 1982, which includes
a tango. His true breakthrough as a composer of concert music followed in 1990
with Toccata for Vibraphone and Marimba, which is virtuosic, technically challenging music that alternates
with dreaming passages of enchanting beauty. In this Anders Koppel has found a
style of his own that both enables the performing musicians to create
performances of the highest standard and appeals directly to audiences. Anders
Koppel has later sublimated these qualities into a succession of solo concertos
where a single instrument plays against a whole orchestra. The concerto form is
one that reaches out to audiences, since they can immediately identify with the
lone soloist, and Anders Koppel is just the man to equip the instrumentalist
with both intimate human feelings and hypernatural power and passion.
This comes to expression for the first
time in Concerto no. 1 for Saxophone and
-Orchestra (1992), in Concerto
for Piano, Strings and Percussion (1993) and in Concerto
no. 1 for Marimba and Orchestra (1995) - and
afterwards so far in 18 concertos for various solo instruments. -Anders Koppel
has also composed several double concertos, including the Concerto
for Flute, Harp and Orchestra (1998), where the
elegance and poetry are akin to Mozart's classic concerto for the same
ensemble, while the actual tonal idiom - with its magically impressionistic
treatment of sound and sensually dancing character - is Anders Koppel's own.
Anders Koppel's vocal works play a special
role. In the cantata Gemmer hvert et ord (‘Treasure Every Word') (1998), which was written for choir, brass
band and organ in memory of the Battle of Fredericia 1849, the concertante
element is absent. Instead the music is typified by an inwardness that is
finely attuned to the text, whose content, taken from old soldiers' letters,
provides thought-provoking insights into the great human cost of war for the
individual soldier. It is quite a different matter with the opera Rebus (1999-2000), which is a parodic mosaic of modern man's meandering
between hectic smugness and existential crisis. Here Anders Koppel, with
inspiration from both Dadaism and the Fluxus movement, has composed for both
rock/jazz and classical singers as well as the crossover ensemble Mad Cows
Sing, who together create an ebullient musical evocation of the questing
transitional humanity of the turn of the millennium.
In Concerto
no. 3 for Marimba and Orchestra (2002-03) composed
for the Austrian marimba virtuoso Martin Grubinger, Anders Koppel has given his
music greater symphonic breadth. The tonal idiom is still characterized by
rhythmic energy, but the kaleidoscopic play with genres and styles has been toned
down in favour of more classical formal thinking, where the individual work
constitutes more of an organic totality. This path is pursued in among other
works Concertino for Two Guitars and
Chamber Ensemble (2003), Concerto
no. 2 for Saxophone and Orchestra (2003) and Concerto
for Saxophone, Piano and Orchestra (2005). In the
Concertino this leads to a synthesis where the original Latin temperament of
the guitar is given a tone of Nordic coolness, while in the second saxophone
concerto Anders Koppel cultivates an expressive style where effects from the
jazz and big-band tradition are ingeniously merged with the large classical
concerto form.
In the double concerto for saxophone and
piano Anders Koppel has taken yet another step in the direction of creating
music characterized by simplicity despite the cultivation of external
magnificence and bravura. This brings Anders Koppel back to one of the insights
of his earliest youth. At the age of 12 he formed a study circle to research
the thinking of the Danish social critic and literary scholar Georg Brandes.
The members included Brandes' more than 90-year-old daughter, and one of the
topics was the idea that in art it is possible to express the infinitely great
in the infinitely small. For Anders Koppel today this has developed into a
growing interest in basic musical elements, such as the individual motif and
the actual musical form. With this came increased inspiration from composers
like Beethoven, Schubert and Sibelius, each of whom in his own way mastered the
art of creating integrated works of art with a starting point in a limited body
of material.
Although Anders
Koppel's music often has a strongly visual appeal, it is still absolute music
that is not determined by any external plot, since it is the musical content
itself and the built-in contrasts that bear the music onward. An exception,
however, is the Concerto no. 4 for Marimba and
Orchestra (2005) with the subtitle "In memory of
the transitory". When the concerto was commissioned as part of the Mozart
celebrations in 2006 for a world premiere in the Musikverein in Vienna, Anders
Koppel chose - besides the large symphonic orchestral ensemble - to use the
organ in the legendary concert hall. This gives the music a sacral dimension
that prompted him to associate an experience of his own with the concerto as a
kind of programme. The experience took place when he was on a long car journey
on a hot summer's day in Sweden, where Anders Koppel and his wife stopped in a
dark forest. By chance they found an overgrown memorial on which was written:
"In memory of the transitory".
This enigmatic utterance inspired him to
weave one of Mozart's strokes of absolute genius - the piano movement Rondo
alla Turca - into the virtuoso marimba part in Concerto
no. 4 for Marimba and Orchestra. This particular
Turkish-inspired piece by Mozart was especially well chosen, since it is not
only a nod to one of the greatest composers in history, but also an expression
of a deeply felt artistic belief Anders Koppel has: that music - and our
culture as such - is fertilized by the encounter of different traditions. At
the same time he succeeds, despite the programme's message - disheartening in
its way - about the transience of all things, in creating a life-affirming
experience by purely musical means.
This also underscores how the bearing
content in Anders Koppel's art is tied in with the music's own inherent power.
Ideological messages - whether musical or social - are therefore never the
point of departure for Anders Koppel's activities as a composer. They are
rather a bonus that follows from the work of creating relevant contemporary
music through an unprejudiced use of the musical heritage in all its diversity.
The saxophone concertos
The saxophone is
one of the instruments that Anders Koppel has composed for most often. One
explanation of this is that the saxophone, by virtue of its unusually wide
acoustic and dynamic range, is the perfect vehicle for Anders Koppel's
expansive musical language. The sound of the saxophone can modulate from the
most refined and transparent to the downright aggressive and raw. Both extremes
are represented in Anders Koppel's musical aesthetic. And just as the saxophone
has a special ability to move freely between the classical and the rock/jazz
tradition, Anders Koppel's music is capable of pointing out new musical paths
among the usual genres - a quality also familiar from Gershwin's music.
Another
explanation of the saxophone's prominent position in Anders Koppel's oeuvre is
that since the beginning of the 1990s he has had a close artistic collaboration
with his son Benjamin Koppel, who is one of the most wide-ranging Danish
saxophonists today. Both of Anders Koppel's two saxophone concertos were
written for Benjamin Koppel, and exploit his ability to alternate uninhibitedly
between virtuoso passages in a rigorously composed sequence and original,
imaginative improvisations.
Benjamin and Anders Koppel's collaboration
picked up speed in earnest when Benjamin Koppel was the soloist in the first
concert performance of Concerto no. 1 for Saxophone and
Orchestra, which took place at the NUMUS festival
in Århus in 1997. In the same period Benjamin Koppel formed the cross-over
ensemble Mad Cows Sing, for which Anders Koppel has composed a number of works
with the saxophone in a prominent role. Anders Koppel's other works for
saxophone include Serenade for Saxophone Quartet (1992), Capriccio for Sax, Cello and Piano
(1994) and Concerto
for Saxophone, Piano and Orchestra (2005) with its
world premiere by the Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DR in the autumn of
2006.
Concerto
no. 1 for Saxophone and Orchestra was originally
composed in 1992, but is heard here in a revised version from 2004, which makes
more use of the symphony orchestra's broad palette. The duration of the
concerto has also been increased, since Anders Koppel has taken more time to
characterize and unfold the individual sections in the concerto. Yet it is
still a classically coloured concerto, where the two fast outer movements in
particular share features with the musicianly dialogue between soloist and
orchestra of the Classical and Baroque eras. By virtue of a number of
improvised solos and cadenzas along the way we even come unusually close to the
practice of earlier times, when true improvised passages were an integral part
of the concerto form.
As a contrast with the fast, rhythmically
telling sections of Concert no. 1 for Saxophone and
Orchestra, Anders Koppel has inserted a number of
evocative lyrical passages that imbue the concertante style with a magical
element. This can be felt for example in the ethereal introduction - and ending
- of the first movement, where the bright-sounding soprano saxophone is wrapped
in a robe of delicate string sounds with added bell notes on the celesta. In the
calm second movement the soloist changes to the darker alto saxophone, which in
an interplay with among other things a so-called alto flute and high, hovering
strings, creates a dreamlike nocturnal mood. Sudden eruptions from the lowest
strings and ominous melodic fragments in the woodwinds do however create a
feeling of dark, threatening night clouds, and a Mahler-like dirge is hinted at
first in the cellos and later in the solo saxophone. This music seems to be
played with bated breath, and the gathering eeriness calls for a resolution
that comes when the whole symphony orchestra unites in a mean rock groove. This
creates a background against which Benjamin Koppel can plunge into a luxuriant
saxophone solo that clears the mystically charged air.
Concerto
no. 2 for Saxophone and Orchestra, unlike the first
concerto, takes the form of a long continuous sequence. Along the way a number
of shifting moods are played through, together making up a magnificent
fantasia, characterized by both orchestral effects and a sometimes
chamber-music-like dialogue between soloist and orchestra. This happens for
example at the beginning of the concerto, where a high solo violin hovering
against the backdrop of a faintly tremulous string tapestry so to speak forms
the runway for the alto saxophone's first solo flights. Midway through the
concerto, too, in a calm adagio section where the music elaborates on the
refined sonorities of the beginning, saxophone and violin meet in a still
shadow play.
This music of
vague presentiments creates an ethereal framework around the more insistently
fast main section of the concerto, where saxophone and orchestra challenge each
other in close bodily interplay. It is music with a direct physical appeal and
a fundamental feel of dance-like elegance; at times with romantically dreaming
episodes that recall a scene in a ballet by Tchaikovsky; at other times the
symphony orchestra plays with jazz elements that create references to the vital
pulse of a big band.
Afterwards comes a teasing scherzo where
the low brasses grow comical, inviting us up for a skewed, syncopated dance,
while the saxophone like some circus artiste plunges into a rash tightrope walk
with a twinkle in its eye. Then the concerto culminates in a marvellous
virtuoso finale dominated by hyper-activity and zany narrative exuberance for
both soloist and full orchestra. Thus it turns out that Concerto
no. 2 for Saxophone and Orchestra, despite its
playful freedom with styles and orchestral colours, is in purely formal terms
cut from whole classical cloth consisting of four movements - fast, slow,
scherzo, fast - all making up a harmonious whole.
The CD ends with Swan
Song, a small instrumental jewel originally
composed in 1987 as the title theme for a radio adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf's Niels
Holgersen's Wonderful Journey. The piece is
typified by an inwardly lyrical tone and here, where Swan
Song is heard in a new orchestral version with
Benja-min Koppel as soloist, the little encore piece has the character of a
jazz ballad wrapped in golden euphony.
Esben Tange, 2006