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Jesper Koch creates dream worlds on new album

Jesper Koch, Justin Brown & Eugen Tichindeleanu © Knud Erik Jørgensen

Jesper Koch creates dream worlds on new album

Jesper Koch's compositions are dealing with longing, nostalgia and dreams. This Friday, three of his concertos are released on the album Dreamscapes, recorded by Odense Symphony Orchestra. 

New release
04 November 2019

»I have always escaped into music«, the composer Jesper Koch relates. »As a boy, I experienced music as the ideal world, and I spent most of my childhood at the piano. The real world didn’t have the same appeal at all.« 

On Friday 8 November, three of his concertos are released on the album Dreamscapes, recorded by Odense Symphony Orchestra. 

Nostalgia and other worlds

Jesper Koch was born in Copenhagen in 1967, and the fascination with the world of dreams has not grown any less over the years. On the contrary, his technical mastery as a composer has offered him an increasing number of opportunities to paint dream pictures and enable the listener to enter other worlds than the real one. Jesper Koch’s music is melodious and often tonal, which makes perfect sense when so many of his works are dealing with nostalgia and lost dream worlds

The title of the cello concerto Dreamscapes (2005-07) says without further ado that the music is about a flight from reality, while the starting point for the violin concerto Arcadia Lost is Venice, as described in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Romantic poem Julian and Maddalo from 1819,  which has Romantic longing and pent-up feelings as its theme. The third work on the album, the clarinet concerto Lonesome is kind of a ‘theme with variations’ in a single movement, where not only the clarinet’s opening theme is varied on but also loneliness itself.

Works dedicated to the performers

All three solo concertos were dedicated to the performers on this album, that is the cellist Michaela Fukacová, the clarinettist John Kruse and the violinist Eugen Tichindeleanu. All three concertos have been performered by Odense Symphony Orchestra, which over the years has been Jesper Koch’s faithful partner, and the recordings on the album are world premiere recordings. 

Celebration in KoncertKirken

The release of the new album is being celebrated at Athelas Sinfonietta's concert Lyset i mørket / Mørket i lyset (The light in the darkness / The darkness in the light) on 9 November at 16.00 in KoncertKirken, where Jesper Koch's new work Poesien er mørket i lyset (Poetry is the darkness in the light) is being performed for the first time, along with works by Hugi Gudmundsson and Morten Olsen. 

After the concert, Edition·S and Dacapo Records are inviting all participants to a release reception of the album Dreamscapes.

  • Jesper Koch

    Dreamscapes

  • Jesper Koch

    Orchestral Works

  • Svend Hvidtfelt Nielsen, Jesper Koch, Lars Hegaard, Ib Nørholm, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen

    Five Danish Piano Trios