Poul Ruders (b. 1949) is one of the most frequently played living Danish composers both in Denmark and abroad, and on Dacapo Records' new release with Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, two of the composer's great works, Viola Concerto and Handel Variations, can be heard.

“A music that takes it's time”

The first work of the album, the Viola Concerto, was written in 1993-94, but has never been recorded until now. The work was written in a technique to which Ruders gave the title ‘minimorphosis’ – an idea developed when he worked on the Viola Concerto, and which consists in minimalistic changes. Everything derives from the viola’s melodic line that opens the work, from which are evolved independent, simultaneous layers employing augmentation and diminution (broadening or shortening of the rhythmic patterns)’.

The music has an almost Late Romantic expressive style and is played with rich, many-faceted feeling by the Norwegian viola virtuoso Lars Anders Tomter.

Ruders himself describes the Viola Concerto as a tribute to inwardness, patience and beauty, and even though it is almost 25 years since the work was written, Ruders states that we “still need a music, that takes it's time and develops with great patience.”

– and he continues:
“... this seems not to be the case in the Handel Variations, which is a cornucopia of changing emotions and colours with almost filmic ‘sound clips’. And yet: In the second part of the work – after the general pause – the serenity is re-established and the work fades in an almost trance-like closing.”

90 variations on eight bars

The Handel Variations were composed in 2009 prior to the 75th anniversary of Aarhus Symphony Orchestra the following year. In this work, Poul Ruders has composed no less than 90 different variations on eight bars from George Frideric Handel’s famous Water Music. The short variations grow together into a symphonic totality where the orchestral colours are constantly shifting. The theme Ruders chose for his variations is the engagingly brief ‘Bourrée’ from Handel’s Water Music – or, to be more precise, it’s the first eight bars of the Bourrée.

On the work with the Handel Variations, Ruders tells:
“What happens is that the original melody, the eight bars from Handel (which has been rummaging in my mind for years as an obvious theme for variations), let's call it the 'main-portrait', is slowly being drawn in both ears and nose, and the wellknown face is being totally twisted, slowly and relentless, until it has irrevocably disappeared, but then it becomes reborn in another shape: my portrait. The Handel Variations turn into the Ruders Variations. I now vary ‘myself’ to the bitter end. – Mission accomplished...”