Erik Højsgaard's music has always had a dreamlike quality. Everything moves in the space between reality and our memory of it.

On 16 May a new album is released on CD and streaming, bringing together three of Højsgaard's key works wthat poetically capture the wonderful waters of Venice and weave together fragments of literary worlds. Pre-save the album to your streaming library here.

Always lyrically and with careful consideration

Erik Højsgaard has always been the lyrical expressionist in Danish music. He always expresses himself lyrically and with careful consideration, both during his many years of teaching and in his music – when he speaks, people listen. The music is pleasantly accessible and Højsgaard never employs louder  sounds or broader gestures than absolutely necessary.

At the same time he has an expressionistic side which draws the music in another direction. Because Erik Højsgaard has things he wants to say and he often expresses himself through the world of poetry. His works, even the wordless ones, are often inspired by titles, phrases and sometimes whole collections of poetry.

Literary fragments

The album opens with Essays for soprano and sinfonietta. The music – glimmering, rasping and waving – is inspired by the waters of Venice as described by the Russian writer Joseph Brodsky's. In recent years, Erik Højsgaard has visited the city in the month of January. ‘In this month there is a stillness in the city, a calm’, he writes, ‘it is a bit chilly, some days full of sunshine, others foggy and hazy – and the city reveals a different side of itself to the one we normally see.’

In the work Udstillingsbillede (‘Picture at an Exhibition’) Højsgaard transforms L.A. Ring’s iconic painting Folk som går fra kirke (‘People Leaving Church’) from 1889  into a musical reflection.

The title work Please accept a Sunset is a collection of songs for soprano and sinfonietta, where fragments of literary worlds intertwine within a soundscape imbued with a dreamlike resonance. At the forefront is a poem by the American Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) whose words Højsgaard has put into music several time since 1976. Dickinson presumably wrote the poem for an acquaintance and in a letter to him, the poem is accompanied by the wonderfully poetic words Please accept a sunset, which gave the work its title.