Per NØRGÅRD (b. 1932)
Piano works
Animals in Concert (1984/87) [15:09]
Cob Weaver and Other Secrets on the Way (2002) [3:40]
Nine Friends (1984) [22:25]
Fragments I-IV (1959-61) [4:55]
Nine Studies Op.25B (1959) [10:21]
Four Sketches Op.25A (1959) [3:05]
Erik Kaltoft (piano)
rec. Carl Nielsen Academy of Music, May and October 2008
DACAPO 8.226089 [59:34]
Per Nørgård’s piano works include major contributions to the repertoire such
as the two piano sonatas. Significant works such as Grooving and Turn
from the late 1960s and early 1970s have also achieved ‘classic’ status.
There are also numerous shorter pieces for piano, of which this programme
is a selection.
There is an intriguing mixture of fun and seriousness here. That said, even
where lighter elements, such as The Beatles quote used, ‘Blackbird’, in Light
of a Night – Paul meets bird the composer is always exploring and conjoining
the related and the disparate. In all three of the Animals in Concert
there are serious ideas being worked out and developed, at the same time as
our imaginations are being filled with A Tortoise’s Tango or the Hermit
Crab Tango, neither of which being likely to receive a selection to accompany
a turn in ‘Strictly Come Dancing.” Cob Weaver and Secrets on the
Way are two of a number of occasional pieces Nørgård has written for birthday
celebrations or the like. The first is akin to a kind of quasi-accelerating
Nancarrow-like tone row, which is then subdued through a brief transition,
added later to connect it to the dreamlike Secrets...
Nine Friends is a set of pieces, each dedicated to a male or female
friend, the suite connected by a song-like theme which appears in four of
the movements, the whole progressing from innocent simplicity to virtuoso
bravura. Nørgård suggests this is a kind of “Danish little brother to Elgar’s
magnificent “Enigma” Variations, using only the first names of the
friends referred to as a way of heightening his connection. The opening Secret
One (To Lars) has an almost folk-like feel, initially almost wanting to
break out into Nielsen’s ‘Puppet March’. The moods range from charming miniature
in Tiny (to Lasse), to rough tango in Illusive (to Per),
and as always with Nørgård there are symmetries, mirror images, and elusive
musical double-entendres aplenty.
The Fragments I-IV represent the first of Nørgård’s preoccupation with
the fractal ‘infinity series’, which he discovered or ‘re-discovered’ in 1959.
This technique involves the potential in shifts in the scale of musical material
akin to the familiar fractal patterns now relatively easily reproduced on
computer screens. There were no home computers in 1959, but the advance of
such a technique and the results fit in well with the exploratory mood in
the musical landscape of the time. The Fragments are pre-dated by the
1959 Nine Studies, in which the germination of these can be traced
in the ‘development of a few-note nucleus into a long melody’ ideas and structures
in the pieces and the form of the works as a whole. Despite the ‘research-lab’
origins and feel of these pieces, Nørgård never entirely abandons tonality,
and there are some nice witty touches at the heart of the Nine Studies
which prevent this becoming a dry academic exercise by a long way. Also
from 1959 come the Four Sketches, a kind of ‘little sister’ to the
Nine Studies and premiered at the same concert in 1960. The family
resemblance between the two works is clear, though the Sketches are
lighter and less complex in nature.
Per Nørgård’s work is hardly ever less than entirely fascinating, and as some
of these pieces show, can also be hugely entertaining. All of the works here
are played with a fine touch by Erik Kaltoft, and given a nicely recorded
if fairly warm and woolly ambience. I might have argued for a chronological
sequence with regard to the programming, at least when it comes to the developing
sequence of ‘fractal’ works, here somewhat perversely reversed. There is no
doubt a good reason for this, and it’s only a small point. This release provides
a valuable look into some of the less well-trodden paths of Nørgård’s pianistic
output, and as a result should be snapped up by serious collectors.
Dominy Clements