Bent Sørensen meets Michael Strunge in the song cycle Popsange
Popsange (Pop Songs) is a unique encounter between two artistic voices, both of which emerged in the 1980s with a longing and sensitive expression. The song cycle has now been recorded for the first time and will be released on 26 September.
In the artistic landscape of the 1980s, both composer Bent Sørensen and poet Michael Strunge emerged as young voices who would later prove to be defining for their generation. Soon you can experience a unique encounter between the two artists in the song cycle Popsange – one of Bent Sørensen’s very first works, with texts by Michael Strunge – which has finally been recorded for the first time by tenor Mathias Monrad Møller and pianist Linda Dahl Laursen.
Pre-save the album to your streaming library here.
Delicate love poems brought to life
The song cycle Popsange (1990) consists of eight songs for tenor and piano. Most of the texts come from Strunge’s poetry collection of the same name from 1983, inspired by rock icons such as David Bowie and Lou Reed.
Bent Sørensen's other major inspiration for Popsange was Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine's song cycle Dichterliebe which, similar to Strunge's poems, has a hypersensitive expression. Both Strunge and Heine wrote delicate love poems, with hearts on the verge of breaking. That sensitivity is brought to life by Bent Sørensen through a musical language imbued with a romantic sensibility unusual for its time, and with melodies that weave their way through the music.
The music feels strangely familiar, yet distant and uncertain. Delicate piano sounds and hushed tones in the tenor voice illuminate a musical landscape also marked by melancholy, loneliness, and despair. And perhaps it is precisely here that Popsange reveals its greatest strength: when it becomes possible to sit within the unbearable through the music and the words.
Single and release concert
Today a single is released from the album, that is the song Vindens puls. Bent Sørensen read Michael Strunge's poem of the same name back in 1983 when he was young and it inspired him to writing one of his very first works at a time when he had not yet been admitted to the conservatory. Listen via this link.
The release of Popsange will be celebrated at a concerto at H20 in Copenhagen. Here Mathias Monrad Møller and Linda Dahl Laursen will play the eight songa from the cycle and an excerpt from Dichterliebe. Afterwards Bent Sørensen and Mathias Monrad Møller will talk about the music in a conversation moderated by Esben Tange. Read more here.