Rare Piano Works – Selections

Per Nørgård at the Piano

Af Ivan Hansen

Per Nørgård stands as one of Scandinavia’s most significant composers of the modern era. His roughly four hundred works include eight symphonies, six operas, concertos, chamber and choral music as well as music for ballet, film and electronic media – some one hundred hours of music in all.

Nørgård’s works in the years leading up to 1960 carry forward the Nordic tradition of Jean Sibelius and Carl Nielsen. Through Vagn Holmboe (1909–1996), his teacher during his formative years, he developed a keen interest in musical metamorphosis where seeds of rhythmic and melodic material are ceaselessly transformed and developed. This led to a lifelong fascination with the metamorphoses and symmetries at work in the music of Sibelius, with whom he corresponded in 1954–55. Sibelius remained a guiding star for Nørgård well beyond his youth.

Studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1956–57 strengthened the ‘universe of the northern mind’ in Nørgård’s music, until encounters with other young international composers around 1958 inspired him to experiment with forms and idioms beyond the Nordic tradition: collage, music theatre, percussion, electronic music, happenings and, in 1966–67, a music of an almost psychedelic intensity, hovering between melody and pure sonority, as one hears in the orchestral works Iris and Luna.

At the same time Nørgård was developing his own technique, the infinity series: a principle of musical growth applicable to any conceivable scale, generating melodies that replicate themselves in successively slower and faster canons, which then replicate themselves in turn, and so on, a ‘fractal music’, as it came to be known. From the orchestral work Rejse ind i den gyldne skærm (‘Voyage into the Golden Screen’) (1968) through to around 1980, Nørgård created a personal musical universe in which melodies from the infinity-series are combined with a unique harmonic language built on overtone and undertone series – a nuanced, personal form of major and minor. To this came rhythms based on the golden ratio (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 and so on) and its characteristic organic rhythmic swing. The result is a music of resonance and equilibrium, heard in works including Symphony No. 3 (1972–75), the operas Gilgamesh (1972) and Siddharta (1979/1984), and a range of chamber, choral and vocal works.

‘I stand with one foot in Western rationalism and the other in Eastern mysticism, yet feel a stranger to both. I am, so to speak, a kind of third point in the picture’, as the composer said of his music during this period.

Around 1980 Nørgård radically changed course towards a spontaneously composed, dramatic and fractured music, inspired by the pictures and texts of the schizophrenic Swiss outsider artist Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930). Works from this period include the opera Det guddommelige Tivoli (‘The Divine Circus’) (1982), a number of choral works, and Symphony No. 4, Indischer Roosen-Gaarten und Chineesischer Hexen-See (1981). Nørgård then found inspiration in new forms of tone-rows, melodic networks and tempo relations, heard in three solo concertos for cello, viola and violin respectively. In the 1990s this was combined with a direct, often violent orchestral expression, as in Symphony No. 5 (1990), Symphony No. 6 (1999) and its sister piece Terrains Vagues (2000), the Piano Concerto In due tempi (1994) and the war opera Nuit des Hommes (1996), setting texts by Apollinaire.

In the new century Nørgård drew on the full range of his techniques and expressive means, including a renewed interest in overlooked aspects of the infinity series, as in the Harp Concerto No. 2, Gennem torne (‘Through Thorns’) (2003). Where earlier one could discern longer, coherent phases of development in his music, it now seemed as though each work called forth its own universe. The Violin Concerto No. 2, Borderline (2002), focused on charged boundaries between ordinary equal-tempered and floating overtone-based scales and melodies. In the Hans Christian Andersen work Lygtemændene tager til byen (‘The Will-O’-the-Wisps Go to Town’) (2003–04), the mature Nørgård returned in a sense to the world of comic strips for which he wrote his first songs in the 1940s. Symphony No. 7 (2004–06) and a number of cello works, including the sonata Rhizom (2004) and Cello Concerto No. 2, Momentum (2009), which chart their own courses, as does Nørgård’s last major work, Symphony No. 8 (2010–11), recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic under conductor Sakari Oramo in 2014 (Dacapo Records 6.220574).

What characterises the composer Per Nørgård across more than sixty-five years is his interest in the organic development of musical lines and in the drama that arises from interference – the meeting of those lines. Stylistically, Nørgård is inclusive, kaleidoscopic: certain works graze against Balinese gamelan, others resound with the passion of European Romanticism, and others still with the structural mobiles of a cooler avant-garde. The driving force appears to be the pursuit of new paths – and the periodic setting aside of earlier practice, until previous strategies and ideas resurface in new contexts.

The Piano as Prism
Per Nørgård’s earliest musical explorations took place in Copenhagen in the 1940s at the family’s Hindsberg grand piano. Classical piano lessons followed, along with his own music-hall songs, until around 1947–48 he began composing in earnest: placing a sheet of manuscript paper on the piano, writing ‘Sonate’ at the top, and then trying to set down his musical ideas. An inspiring evening-class lecture that same year on Stravinsky’s music, given by the composer Jørgen Jersild, led to contact with Vagn Holmboe, who became his private teacher in 1949–51, a period concluded by the work that closes this release. The present recording is the digital prelude to the double album of Per Nørgård’s piano works, to be released on CD in early 2027.

‘Stjerne-barcarole’ (‘Star Barcarole’) (1995), subtitled ‘Stjerner over Hanne’ (‘Stars above Hanne’), reveals an unfamiliar side of Per Nørgård: his affinity with the poetic folk rock of the 1960s and the world of creative, self-taught singer-songwriters who, besides The Beatles, included above all Donovan, The Incredible String Band and others. Related to this is his collaboration with the Danish troubadour Povl Dissing, who had Nørgård’s ‘Vedis vuggevise’ (‘Vedi’s Lullaby’) (1958) in his repertoire, and with whom Nørgård performed at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in 1987. Later came the collaboration with Hanne Methling, who, enchanted by Nørgård’s sensitive piano playing, asked whether he might like to accompany her song ‘Dér hvor de falder fra hinanden’ (‘Where They Fall Apart’) (1991). He agreed both to write a prelude and to improvise a free accompaniment to the song, which was released on Methling’s album Katteguld in 2013. The composed prelude may be performed independently; here the composer draws threads from the melody into a Nørgårdian nocturne on Methling’s song, whose first verse suggests the atmosphere:

The fire reaches me to the bone
on a wonderfully frost-clear night.
The blanket protects the soul
there are stars I cannot fathom (…)

‘Magyar Danyl Nota’ (2005) is a seventieth-birthday gift to the Hungarian-born pianist and conductor Tamás Vetö (1935–2025), who became a Danish citizen in 1957 and from 1964 was a central interpreter of Nørgård’s music at the Royal Danish Opera, Den Jyske Opera (The Danish National Opera) and the Danish National Symphony Orchestra (of the Danish Broadcasting Corporation). Their collaboration ranged from world premieres of works such as Lila (1971), Gilgamesh and Twilight (1976), through major performances of the Symphony No. 3 and Siddharta, to later premieres of substantial choral works including Mytisk morgen (‘Mythic Morning’) (2000) and Ut Rosa (2001). The title is somewhat cryptic and suggests the meaning ‘Hungarian–Danish melody’ – the autograph reads ‘Magyar Nota’ – but the point seems clear: a Hungarian, chromatically dark, Bartókian right hand set against a more arpeggiated, luminous Danish-Nørgårdian left hand, the two meeting in harmonically rich cadences touched, perhaps, with mild wistfulness. The movement was incorporated the same year into the trio work Delta as its second movement, under the title ‘Nostalgia’.

Maj på vej – tre vejrbilleder (‘May on Its Way – Three Weather Pictures’) (2007) takes its inspiration from water, specifically the rainy Danish spring month of April. The sweet, mild month of May is still only on its way. In the first movement, ‘April – ikke til at regne med!’ (‘April – Not to Be Relied Upon!’), the music too is changeable, unstable and unpredictable. Stravinskian rhythms arrive in gusts and splashes, punctuated by the drumming of rain on a roof; then a more idyllic, bluesy calm gradually subsides into the composer’s ‘Flos ut Rosa’ melody. But not for long: an abrupt, aggressive assault breaks in from above, until the opening motif rounds things off with characteristic good cheer. The second movement, ‘Solregn’ (‘Sunshower’), moves as calmly as light rain in sunshine, shimmering; the music is searching and smile-through-tears in character, like a nostalgic aria. In the closing movement, ‘Dagregn’ (‘Daytime Rain’), notes fall from above: dripping, trickling, splashing. A brief pause eddies and trickles, then the flow resumes. The three impressionistic pieces were composed in 2007 for the premiere at Foreningen Ny Musik i Birkerød (‘The New Music Society in Birkerød’) at its 25th anniversary concert, and are dedicated to its founder Kirsten Benn on her 75th birthday in May 2007.

Waterways (Vandveje) (2008–09) continues the water-inspired vein from Maj på vej. An early manuscript version carried the title Waterways (Krusninger) (‘Waterways (Ripples)’) and the movement titles ‘Resonanser’ (‘Resonances’) (I), ‘Fluktuationer’ (‘Fluctuations’) (II) and ‘Spejlinger’ (‘Reflections’) (III). This is music that spreads in waves of overlapping and hovering sonorities, and in swirling rapid passages. Nørgård wrote of the pieces: ‘In the motifs of the three movements there are connections back to two of my earlier piano works (‘Grooving’ from 1968 and ‘Achilles and the Tortoise’ from 1983).’

The first movement is characterised by echo effects also found in ‘Grooving’. A succession of semitones sounds into one another and is then immediately damped, so that the after-impression of the muted tones mirrors the original sequence. In this movement an additional echo has been added, as a ‘skip’ across a water surface, three times. In the second movement there are reminiscences of ‘Achilles and the Tortoise’: arpeggio-like right- and left-hand scales on black and white keys respectively. Here the individual notes glint like reflections on a water surface, a moiré of constantly shifting, very short note-values. In the third movement the pattern of irregular durations unfolds and expands, though only fragmentarily, and a new melody emerges. The work was composed for and dedicated to the pianist Anne Marie Fjord Abildskov.

Partita sévera (1951) is a work of some twenty-three minutes in five movements, written as the nineteen-year-old Per Nørgård’s concluding gift to the composer and teacher Vagn Holmboe and the pianist Meta Holmboe after two years as a private composition pupil, before his studies began at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen in early 1952. His audition with Holmboe in the summer of 1949 led to two years of foundational training in composition, comprising a mix of critique of his own pieces and the study of major works from Bach through the Viennese classics, and on to Stravinsky, Ravel and Bartók.

The summer of 1951 was a time for celebration: the eighteen-year-old Nørgård had passed his school-leaving examinations and been accepted as a composition student at the Royal Danish Academy of Music. He marked the occasion with a motorbike journey with his elder brother Bent through the still bomb-ravaged cities of Europe all the way down to Rome. New experiences – on his own.

The Partita was written on his return as a gesture of thanks to the Holmboe couple. The work had in all likelihood never been performed, except perhaps for a private run-through by Meta Holmboe. This, then, was the music a gifted young composer newly graduated wrote in 1951, taking inspiration from Holmboe’s piano music, for instance his Suono da Bardo (1949), as well as from Nielsen, Stravinsky, Bartók and others. Christina Bjørkøe played the work privately for Per Nørgård in April 2025, to his great delight. It was established on that occasion that the youthful wildness in the music might well be attributed to the motorbike journey, ‘full throttle!’, combined with a wish to honour Holmboe’s inspiring seriousness and concentration: the sévera.

The Partita’s five movements carry their titles naturally in Italian:

– ‘Introduzione’ (Tempo giusto): The opening is serious, yet the whole is a fine blend of gravity, sudden departure and dance-like, barbarically propulsive Balkan rhythms. A headlong sketch.

– ‘Elegia I’ (Grave ed espressivo): The expression is both elegiac in a youthful way and wild, intense and overwhelming. – ‘Intermezzo’ (Allegro): Hard-hitting rhythms and glissandi dominate this central movement, with solitary recitations and abrupt chordal strokes. Towards the end the pace shoots upward – as the notes head downward!

– ‘Elegia II’ (Largo e pesante): A deep, rising three-note motif is repeated in lamentation, while a falling four-note motif descends from above. The harmonies are out of balance and grow with desperate force. The voices attempt imitative gathering (Poco più mosso) but fall to the ground. The rising lamenting motif rises at last – a glimmer of hope?

– ‘Conclusione’ (Allegro non troppo): The homeward journey at speed. The bass’s deep Ds make room for both a chromatic turning motif (the notes C – B – A – B-flat) and a more winding motif (E-flat – A-flat – D-flat – C – A – A-flat – B). Both whirl onwards together, until the two motivic travelling companions meet at last, albeit each on their own home note, A and B-flat respectively.

© Ivan Hansen, 2026

Drawing on his background as a musician and music scholar, Ivan Hansen has played a central role in making Per Nørgård’s music and ideas accessible. He has focused in particular on documenting and explaining the relationship between Nørgård’s thinking and the practical realisation of his music, including through his work for the Royal Library in Copenhagen editing and publishing Per Nørgårds skrifter (‘Per Nørgård’s Writings’) and Per Nørgårds kompositioner (‘Per Nørgård’s Compositions’).