Future releases

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen (1932–2016) wrote string quartets all his life. Fourteen in all; the first three dating from 1959, the last ones from 2013. Launching its complete cycle of Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s string quartets, the Nordic String Quartet here presents the first six quartets: Childlike wonder meets cynical comment, cliché meets originality, the ecstatic is combined with the ascetic – Gudmundsen-Holmgreen’s string quartets are full of such clashes. We start at one point and end at a totally different one. Never fusty, often entertaining, always adamant.

Erlkönigs Tochter (Elf-King’s Daughter) is a dramatic cantata from 1854, based on danish medieval ballads. It became one of Niels W. Gade’s greatest successes, not only in his native Denmark but throughout Europe, where Erlkönigs Tochter was performed several hundred times, often conducted by Gade himself. Gade was especially admired in Germany, and on this album, Erlkönigs Tochter is not only played on period instruments for the first time but is also sung for the first time with the German text that brought the work international fame. Here the cantata is put together with Gade’s breakthrough as an a cappella composer, Fünf Gesänge from 1846, also in German.

Red is a colour with many meanings. It is the colour of blood, the colour of danger, the colour of temptation, passion and love. Hans Christian Andersen took the symbolism to a new extreme of cruelty in The Red Shoes – an ancient folk tale here given a modern musical reworking by Siobhan Lamb and the Suoni Ensemble.