12 Nocturnes & Piano Concerto No. 3, La sera estatica

The Love of the Piano at Night

By Esben Tange

Despite the special aura that surrounds the piano in the world of classical music, for many years Bent Sørensen found it difficult to compose for the instrument. Perhaps because, to a large extent, the piano is a piece of finely tuned machinery, one that immediately lends itself to direct, concrete music rather than the wealth of nuances that is so characteristic of Sørensen’s work. Except for the piano concerto La Notte (1996–98), it was not until he encountered the two pianists Leif Ove Andsnes and Katrine Gislinge that he truly embraced the instrument as a composer:

‘With them came a longing for the piano, and a realisation that the music could swim and drift,’ Sørensen recalls: ‘It is as though the piano has come to understand me, and now I am immensely happy writing for it.’

This has led to a number of original piano works, all of them dedicated to either Andsnes or Gislinge: The Shadows of Silence (2004), the piano concerto La Mattina (2007–09), the trilogy Papillons (2013–14), Fantasia Appassionata (2017), and the works on this album: the piano cycle 12 Nocturnes (2000–14) and the piano concerto La sera estatica(2021). First comes the night – a quieter world where the imagination is set free and there is time to dream. This is followed by La sera estatica, inspired by some of the magical powers that come into play at dusk, creating a space and the possibility for new encounters once the day has ended.

12 Nocturnes (2000–14)
Bent Sørensen’s 12 Nocturnes are a series of short, concentrated piano pieces of great power. Wonderfully atmospheric, with a shimmering, magical sound, they reach us like starlight in the night sky. Where Chopin’s iconic 19th-century nocturnes are shadowed and full of foreboding, Sørensen’s are luminous: delicate tonal prisms in which harmonies are turned and refracted again and again. They are romantic in spirit, yet re-enchanted on 21st-century terms, music of longing, coloured by special poetic turns, yet spoken in a modern, multi-layered idiom.

Composed intermittently between 2000 and 2014, the pieces embody Sørensen’s growing love of the piano and its capacity to convey intimacy and unlock deep layers of emotion. The starting point was inward: memories of humming lullabies for his two daughters when they were small became Wiegenlieder , the eleventh nocturne, though the first to be written. Strange nocturnal experiences in Copenhagen also played their part:

‘There is something about the combination of piano and night. I have always been fascinated by the sound of a piano from far away, and more than once, walking through the darkened city in the evening or at night, I have stopped, caught by the sound of a piano drifting out of a window. The most beautiful night sound – mysterious and enigmatic in a way that cannot be explained.’

The 12 Nocturnes trace a sequence of nocturnal scenes, spanning the course of a night from evening until morning. The first, ‘Mignon – und die Sonne geht unter’, is based on a poem by Pia Juul: ‘og solen går ned’ (‘and the sun goes down’, from the 1999 collection sagde jeg, siger jeg (I said, I say)). A gentle rocking motif, present from the outset, runs through the piece like a thread. The music is fragile, as though touched with tenderness – like a caress. But sudden violent outbursts hint at a fatal abyss, before the piece dissolves into quiet, night-black tones.

‘Mignon – und die Sonne geht unter’, ‘Mitternacht mit Mignon’ and ‘In Rosenblüter tanzen’ relate to Sørensen’s trilogy Papillons (2014), where a central piano part written for Katrine Gislinge enters into shadow-play with string quartet, ensemble, and string orchestra. Here, Goethe’s enigmatic figure Mignon becomes a mirror for love.

In Sørensen’s nocturnes, night can be a realm of self-forgetfulness, a destructive realm of fatal upheaval, or a consoling one. The latter is especially true of ‘Barcarole’, ‘In den Morgen tanzen’, ‘Sigrids Kantate’ and ‘Sigrids Wiegenlied’, composed for Leif Ove Andsnes and his family. In ‘Sigrids Wiegenlied’, written for the birth of Andsnes’ daughter, this takes on an added dimension: when the same gently flowing music is heard for the third time, a faint voice is heard in the distance, and we witness a child being lifted into the world under the cover of night.

Two of the nocturnes, No. 2, ‘Mondnacht’ and No. 10, ‘304 Sterne in einem kleinen Fenster’, are dedicated to Sørensen’s late friend, the playwright Peter Asmussen (1957–2016). ‘Mondnacht’ is a lullaby, its moonlit beams inspiring crystal-clear music that rises again and again. Though delicate, the music is wholly at peace with itself. By contrast, ‘304 Sterne in einem kleinen Fenster’ is restless, erupting with sudden plunges into the piano’s depths and insistent repetitions. Yet alongside this turbulence runs music of an altogether lighter, more porous character, returning again and again. Music with hidden depths – entirely in keeping with the Asmussen quotation that inspired it: ‘If you did not know where you were, you might believe you were somewhere else.’

In the final nocturne, the chorale study ‘Und die Sonne geht auf (Choralstudie)’, the ground seems secure once again. A calm, consoling tone sounds in the middle register, and with echoes of J.S. Bach’s comforting music Sørensen places himself within a rich, resonant tradition. All the more striking, then, when towards the close the music begins to tremble. Through a soft, flickering tremolo we sense the first rays of morning, and the music transcends itself, rediscovering a purer, brighter form. The sun rises.

Piano Concerto No. 3, La sera estatica (2021)
For Bent Sørensen and his wife, the pianist Katrine Gislinge, the time of the coronavirus pandemic was paradoxically a time of freedom. After a day of composing and video meetings in his studio flat in the centre of Copenhagen, Sørensen would cycle home, where Gislinge would often give a miniature recital of whatever she was working on: a Beethoven piano concerto, Rachmaninov’s Piano Sonata No. 2, or Liszt. At a time when all other social life had been put on hold, these evenings with piano music, as darkness fell, took on an ecstatic quality. For here, in the music, anything could happen – and fragments of what Sørensen heard at home have found their way into La sera estatica (‘the ecstatic evening’).

Unusually for Sørensen, the concerto begins in medias res. With great force we are hurled into a dramatic world where the piano is the driving energy, the orchestra surrounding it as one vast, organic echo chamber. Deep tones are hammered into the piano keys, followed by cascades of notes that form a flowing musical torrent. Chimes and gong strokes add to an atmosphere of gothic unease. When the music finally subsides for a moment, a fleeting hint of Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor appears, like a piece of flotsam on a desolate, windswept beach. Soon, as the piano continues its furious flight into the twilight, it is encircled by glissandi from trombones and strings, their twisted intonations calling to mind lonely, exotic birds. This is no safe place to linger. The first movement ends in a slow epilogue in which the music freezes. Despite the piano’s final tender notes, chilling violin lines betray beauty as nothing more than an illusion.

The slow second movement begins with a peaceful piano solo, its phrases gently rising, quietly echoed by the strings. Soon muted brass and soft chimes envelop the music in a shimmering veil, through which a solo oboe is briefly heard – like a voice from another world. After a short dialogue with the piano, the oboe disappears. A magical encounter in a hushed landscape, charged with emotion. The movement culminates in a large cadenza with obbligato solo violin – performed, to striking effect, by the conductor John Storgårds himself at the world premiere with the Copenhagen Phil. The two voices alternate like souls wary of one another, sometimes fiercely outward, sometimes listening in silence. True harmony only emerges once the piano is left alone, entirely solo. And even if the ominous ‘glissando-birds’ of the first movement briefly reappear, the movement ends with the piano singing softly, affirming that beauty exists.

The brief finale is a study in ecstasy’s fleeting nature. From a buzzing, snarling sound-world – conjured by flutter-tongued flutes and rasping sandpaper – a spark is struck in the piano that ignites a breathless ride. Like a perpetuum mobile, notes flow in an unstoppable torrent from the piano, the orchestra – urged on by percussive woodblocks – acting as a cheering chorus. It becomes all the more uncanny when the music suddenly halts. After a final echo of the earlier rapt, beauty-drenched music, the last tones rise gently, vanishing like a summer breeze. The ecstatic evening is over. Was it a dream?
 

© Esben Tange, 2026

Esben Tange is a writer, musicologist, concert presenter at DR P2, as well as the artistic director of the Rued Langgaard Festival.