Nordic Sound - Tribute to Axel Borup-Jørgensen
Bent SØRENSEN (b.1958)
Whispering - Hommage á Axel Borup-Jørgensen for recorder and strings
[10:16] (2014)
Pelle GUDMUNDSEN-HOLMGREEN (b.1932)
Music for 13 strings - For Axel “Boje” (2014) [13:17]
Sunleif RASMUSSEN (b.1961)
Winter Echoes - Hommage á Axel Borup-Jørgensen for recorder and 13
solo strings (2014) [11:19]
Mogens CHRISTENSEN (b.1955)
Nordic Summer Scherzo Concerto for descant recorder and strings (2014)
[9:52]
Thomas CLAUSEN (b.1949)
Concertino for recorder and strings (2014) [12:33]
Axel BORUP-JØRGENSEN (1924-2012)
Sommasvit op. 24 for String Orchestra (1957) [11:18]
Michala Petri (recorder)
Lapland Chamber Orchestra/Clemens Schuldt
rec. no details given
OUR RECORDINGS 6.220613 SACD [69:12]
Axel Borup-Jørgensen was one of Denmark’s most significant
20th century composers, with an extensive and influential catalogue
of works including music for orchestra, chamber pieces and numerous songs.
Not long after his death, producer and co-founder of Our Recordings Lars Hannibal
met with the composer’s daughter, recorder player Elisabet Selin, to
talk about how to preserve and promote her father’s music. This recording
is one of a number of projects and a particularly important one for Michala
Petri, a longtime family friend and like a “second daughter” to
Axel. Other recordings of Borup-Jørgensen’s music released by Our Recordings
are of his Recorder Music with Elisabet Selin on Our Recordings 8.226910 and
The Percussion Universe of Axel Borup Jørgensen with Gert Mortensen on Our
Recordings SACD 6.220608.
Bent Sørensen’s music “is characterized by his focus on minute
details of sound and texture”, and in its soft sound levels his piece
Whispering encourages us to do the same. Written as a homage to Axel
Borup-Jørgensen, the title relates to Axel’s quiet manner of speech.
The longer periods in which the recorder’s interplay with the upper
strings creates an air of expectation means that the rare appearance of harmony
and lower notes are all the more telling. Landscapes are referred to, but
this is landscape in a moment in which as much is hidden as can be seen. The
final ‘sotto-voce’ three and half minutes or so are truly magical.
Pelle Gudmunson-Holmgreen is the senior member of the living composers in
this programme, and one who went through the influences of Sibelius and Nielsen
in his early years before breaking out via Darmstadt serialism. This, too,
was a long time ago, though while the Music for 13 strings. For Axel “Boje”
is by no means serialist there is a strong pull against tonality and the delivery
of plenty of angst-ridden explosiveness. The angular nature of the music leads
to a highly theatrical character in the work. Its episodic nature results
in clear ‘scenes’, and the whole has the strength to carry a potent
narrative the listeners can fill in for themselves. ‘Boje’ is
the nickname given to Axel by his family, but this I suspect is a work that
responds more to its dedicatee’s force of creativity, “as an admirer
of his art” rather than as a realistic character reference. There are
moments of humour and some moments of more tender reflection towards the end,
but this is more of a monument than a mirror – and striking in its power
to make us remember it as something vast and symphonically seething despite
its strings-only instrumentation.
Sunleif Rasmussen’s Winter Echoes adds recorder solo to eight
string players from the Lapland Chamber Orchestra, in a journey from dark
to light through changes in solo instrument from bass recorder to sopranino.
The first section or movement is a spiky and energetic toccata, the driving
rhythmic ostinato of which eventually gives way to a slower paced leggiero
over which the recorder’s high notes slide and speak with preening aloofness.
The resolution is slower still, the recorder eventually abandoned to its own
devices by the silent strings.
From winter to a Nordic Summer Scherzo by Mogens Christensen, who
takes some notes from piano pieces by Borup-Jørgensen, integrating them into
a piece that is inspired by Swedish culture and that country’s ‘midnight
sun’, both of which held Axel’s affection. With some multiphonic
effects from the recorder and a feel of narrative development, this is an
impressively theatrical and wide-ranging work that nods to Sibelius along
the way. The composer sought to “create a dialogue between noisy sounds
and small fragments of melodies”, and while there can be no argument
about this there is also a great deal of fun to be had along the way.
Thomas Clausen’s background in jazz sees him inhabiting a more recognisably
tonal world in his Concertino for recorder and strings. Baroque models
are referred to, sonata and rondo forms are used, and connections with Bach,
Mozart and Grieg emerge. The second Largo movement is a lovely aria
for the recorder, and the third provides dramatic contrast in its turbulent
accents and restless cadences. This was originally planned as a three-movement
work, but Michala Petri easily persuaded Clausen to add a final fast movement
which turned out as ‘a private tribute to Mozart’, the composer’s
“all time hero.”
The last word in this programme is given to Axel Borup-Jørgensen in his Sommasvit
op. 24 for string orchestra. From 1957 this is considered an early work,
the title being Swedish for ‘Sommen Suite’, referring to a large
lake area in the province of Småland with which the composer was familiar
as a child. In five movements the work describes the arc of a day, from a
suspenseful Morgon to a stormy Natt, with a calm concluding
Epilog with which to round everything off. Everything here is suggestive
rather than explicit, and the imagination is allowed to roam around an intimate
inner landscape rather than specific descriptive depictions. The mood is dark,
lonely and impassive, and even the driving rain of the nocturnal storm strikes
against stone and slaps against wood rather than threatening any kind of human
presence. With the final brief movement we are left haunted by this seemingly
untouched and indifferent region.
Superbly recorded in detailed and colourful SACD sonics, this is a release
which oozes affection for Axel Borup-Jørgensen and is a wonderful snapshot
of Nordic contemporary music in the five world premiere pieces composed in
his honour. Topped by Michala Petri’s virtuosity, no fan of modern music
and the crisp transparency of this ‘northern sound’ should hesitate
in adding it to their collection.
Dominy Clements
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