The Danish composer Peter Heise (1830-79) was a master at writing music for singing voices. His songs are recognised in Denmark as being among the best written in that genre by a Danish composer. On the album Peter Heise: The Song Edition it will for the first time be possible hear practically all of them – a total of 267 songs divided into 11 main themes. A poetic work of a lifetime which has been brought together and organised on the recording by the pianist Christian Westergaard himself.

As an intro to the coming release you can see the video below, in which Christian Westergaard talks about his comprehensive work on this treasure trove of songs, which presents Heise as a song composer of the highest international class. The issue features well above 100 world premieres, supplemented by a number of unprinted manuscripts from the Heise collections at The Royal Danish Library as well as more that 30 songs in translated versions (German, English and French). The songs have been recorded by a total of 18 leading singers from northern Europe belonging to a cross-section of generations, accompanied by Christian Westergaard.

Apart from the box with Peter Heise’s collected songs you can look forward to the release of Heise’s opera Drot og Marsk (King and Marshal), which will be released on 5 February. The opera deals with the struggle for power and events that led to the murder of Erik Klipping (Erik V) in 1286, in a dramatic period of Danish history. Drot og Marsk is one of the most important works of the Danish opera repertoire, and Danish Ministry of Culture had it included in the ‘Danish culture canon’ of 2006.