Favourites might
induce ennui but take a look at the
track listing and you’ll be struggling
to know many, if any, of Naxos’s second
and very welcome volume devoted to Norwegian
"Classics". Many of these
pieces are taken from suites – such
as Sæverud’s Peer Gynt Music or
from Halvorsen’s Scenes from Norwegian
Fairy Tales of which we have II, III
and IV or from Tveitt’s monumental Hardanger
tunes. Others still are overtures or
descriptive works spanning the twentieth
century (from Halvorsen, b. 1864 to
Bræin, born in 1924). All are
worthwhile, colourful and especially
well orchestrated.
Sæverud’s Peer
Gynt excerpts cover the extremes, opening
with diablerie and roistering drive
– wildly accented percussion to the
fore – as well as a grave and powerful
central Hymn and a so-called Mixed Company
movement that demonstrates Peer’s wanderings
and quotes liberally from La Marseillaise,
Yankee Doodle and the Emperor’s Hymn.
His slightly earlier The Ballad of
Revolt is by contrast a much more
powerful and concentrated utterance
– opening with the darkening hour’s
glower and slowly allowing an admixture
of folk-like wind chanting before embarking
on heavily rhythmic and driving writing.
Tveitt’s Welcome with Honour
from the Hardanger Tunes is a particularly
translucent and beautiful example whilst
Hardanger Ale is the opposite
– a paraphrase of Ravel’s Bolero. I
enjoyed the gentle archaisms of Groven’s
At Evening as I did his earlier
Hjalarljod Overture with its
bold, brassy ceremonial contour – exciting
and romantic. The hymnal is secure in
the compositional hands of Edvard Bræin
whose little three-minute piece is full
of songful certainty whilst Gjerstrøm’s
Legend has an impressive if old-fashioned
romantic cantilever, enriched by the
chorale-like solo trumpet that courses
through it. Sommerfeldt has an Arnoldian
cheekiness and has the nerve to end
his Little Overture with some
Egmont Overture reminiscences (at least
that what it sounds like to me). Fartein
Valen (1887-1952) writes an intensely
evocative The Churchyard by the Sea
– full of tense, uneasy and terse
writing, mortality shrouded and philosophically
apt. It delves into dark drama and proves
to be auspiciously well orchestrated.
No wonder international conductors queued
up to play it. We end, as we began with
some burlesque – Halvorsen in frivolous
mood in his Norwegian Fairy Tales scenes.
As with the first volume
the performances are warm and committed.
They catch romance and turbulence with
equal success and a modest financial
outlay will secure both for your shelves,
in perpetuity.
Jonathan Woolf
See also review
by Patrick Waller
Review of Peer Gynt
and other music by Sæverud:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2003/Oct03/Harald_SAEVERUD1.htm
Reviews of Naxos Tveitt discs of Hundred
Hardanger tunes:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/Aug01/Tveitt.htm
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/Oct01/Tveitt.htm
Iceland Symphony Orchestra/Bjarte
Engeset