Grader av hvitt / Degrees of White by Norwegian Radio Orchestra

Nils Henrik Asheim, Johan Harstad

Norwegian Radio Orchestra

Grader av hvitt / Degrees of White

Format: CD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020182285
Catnr: LWC 1206
Release date: 08 January 2021
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020182285

Catalogue number
LWC 1206

Release date
08 January 2021

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

In his orchestral work Degrees of White (2006), composer Nils Henrik Asheim invites an author, an actor, and a noise musician into the symphony orchestra.

”I wanted to work with (or against) a stream of text and thought of this text as its own sound, close to the soundscape,” Asheim writes on his website. He commissioned a text from author Johan Harstad, who then wrote Degrees of White, a script that vacillates between the novel and the stage. In the preface to his book B-sides (2008) where the text is published, Harstad writes about how he consciously “...searches for a positive side to monotony, forcing the prose to become drama and forcing the drama to retain an element of prose[.]”

The narrator in the text is a woman, and in retrospect, we understand that she has long fantasized about freezing to death. In the present time of the text, she is skiing across Greenland with her husband, and the reader follows her through an inner monologue. She declares early on that she has removed her coat. “And I am beginning to freeze to death. That’s the kind of thing I know.”

The orchestral work allows the frost and the stark whiteness to be expressed in several ways. The work consists of four parts. The color white is explicitly introduced early in the first section, when a recording of the actor’s voice complements the small outbursts in the orchestra, with the words “White. In the white.” Within the orchestral landscape we find the winds placed into three groups, each containing both woodwinds and brass, creating a sound more uniform across the room. A quartet, plucked out of the string section, lies far ahead within the soundscape, with musical material consisting of short, pale white tones and friction sounds.

The color white also serves as a motif in the text, where the woman tells us about a wedding dress “so white that I almost disappeared.” We also learn that Greenland sends off blocks of 25,000 year old ice — “encapsulated air from a time when no human being yet walked the earth” — for exclusive ice cubes for Japanese bars. Variations of this story return as a refrain throughout the work.

The narrators are acclaimed, Norwegian actresses Laila Goody (Norwegian, CD1) and Petronella Barker (English, CD2). Also contributing is noise musician Lasse Marhaug (electronic sounds) and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, led by conductor Christian Eggen.

Artist(s)

Christian Eggen (conductor)

Conductor, composer, and pianist Christian Eggen (b. 1957) is one of the most influential figures on the Norwegian music scene. His field of expertise ranges from contemporary music via genre-merging projects, installations, television and radio drama productions to film, theatre, jazz, opera, and classical music.
As a conductor, he is known as one of Europe’s finest interpreters of contemporary music and has worked closely with composers such as Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Helmut Lachenmann. As a conductor of the Ny Musikk Ensemble, The Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and later as permanent conductor and artistic director of Cikada and Oslo Sinfonietta, he has developed Norwegian sinfonietta repertoire since the early eighties and regularly appears on the European contemporary music scene with groups such as the Ensemble MusikFabrik and Ensemble InterContemporain. He has worked with many orchestras including the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala in Milan, and the Royal Philharmonic in London.
He has written music for a vast range of formations and settings. His first opera, Franz Kafka Pictures, received its complete world premiere at the Norwegian National Opera in the autumn of 2013. Sections of the opera have been performed since 2009. As a pianist, Eggen is internationally renowned for his interpretations of Mozart and Carl Nielsen, the latter presented on the recording Carl Nielsen: Piano Music on the Victoria label.
Christian Eggen has collaborated on a multitude of recordings within all aspects of his faceted musical career. He was the Festival Artist of the Year at the Bergen International Festival in 2007 and was appointed Commander of The Royal Norwegian Order of Saint Olav for his contribution to contemporary music in Norway and abroad.

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Petronella Barker (spoken word)

Petronella Barker has worked as an actor for over thirty years. She is part of the permanent ensemble at the National Theatre in Oslo, and she has been associated with Stockholm City Theatre and the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden. She has played major classical roles in both Norwegian and Swedish — Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shakespeare, among others — and she has also done film, TV, radio, and audio books. A partial list of stage roles: Hedda Gabler in 'Hedda Gabler'; Rebecca West in “Rosmersholm”; Solveig, Åse, Woman in Green in “Peer Gynt”; Agnes in “Brand”; Rita in “Little Eyolf”; Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; Genia in “The Vast Domain”, Countess Orsina in “Emilia Galotti”. Partial list of film roles:...

Petronella Barker has worked as an actor for over thirty years. She is part of the permanent ensemble at the National Theatre in Oslo, and she has been associated with Stockholm City Theatre and the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweden. She has played major classical roles in both Norwegian and Swedish — Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shakespeare, among others — and she has also done film, TV, radio, and audio books.
A partial list of stage roles: Hedda Gabler in "Hedda Gabler"; Rebecca West in “Rosmersholm”; Solveig, Åse, Woman in Green in “Peer Gynt”; Agnes in “Brand”; Rita in “Little Eyolf”; Helena in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; Genia in “The Vast Domain”, Countess Orsina in “Emilia Galotti”. Partial list of film roles: Mol in “Thrane’s Method”; Bobbie-Pop in “Hawaii, Oslo”; Victoria’s mother in “Victoria”; Christine Hoff in “Codename Hunter”; the Queen in “The Ash Lad II”.

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Laila Goody (spoken word)

Norwegian Radio Orchestra

The Norwegian Radio Orchestra is known as “the whole land’s orchestra” and is today regarded with a unique combination of respect and affection by its music-loving public. With its remarkably diverse repertoire, this is no doubt the orchestra most heard throughout the land – on the radio, television, and online, and at various diverse venues around the country.
It is a flexible orchestra, performing all from symphonic and contemporary classical music to pop, rock, folk, and jazz. Each year the orchestra performs together with internationally acclaimed artists at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, which is aired to millions of viewers worldwide. Those with whom the orchestra has collaborated in recent years include the Kaizers Orchestra, Mari Boine, Jarle Bernhoft, Diamanda Galàs, Renée Fleming, Andrew Manze, Anna Netrebko, and Gregory Porter.
The Norwegian Radio Orchestra was founded by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in 1946. Its first conductor, Øivind Bergh, led the ensemble in a series of concerts from the broadcasting company’s main studio, establishing the basis of its popularity and securing its status as a national treasure. The orchestra continues to perform in the context of important media events. It is comprised of highly talented classical instrumentalists and yet its musical philosophy has remained the same: versatility, a light-hearted approach, curiosity for all kinds of music, and an unwillingness to pigeonhole musical styles. Petr Popelka is currently the orchestra’s Chief Conductor.

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Harald Aadland (violin)

Willy Aase (violin)

Jon Wien Sønstebø (viola)

Emery Cardas (cello)

Lasse Marhaug (electronics)

Composer(s)

Nils Henrik Asheim

Nils Henrik Asheim (b. 1960, Oslo) combines the careers of organist, pianist, and composer along with his activities as a curator, program creator, and initiator of artistic collaborations. Seated within the classical music tradition, he eventually branched out into the free improvisational scene. He studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and the Sweelinck Academy in Amsterdam.
Nils Henrik Asheim has written a number of chamber works, including Water Mirror, Navigo, Chase, Nicht, and Broken Line, in addition to the orchestral works Mirrors, Turba, Wind Songs, and Degrees of White (LWC1206). He has also composed larger sacred works and has written dramatic music, placespecific works, and compositions where improvisation is a key element. Asheim's music has a clear focus on sound and the sound’s physical and tactile side. His music is usually constructed of several parallel proportions of time, and Asheim works with layers of closeness and distance. Variations of constantly recurring material create an open and self-generating form.
Asheim has developed his own personal improvisational style on the organ, and he cultivates the profile of a performer who defies genre conventions. He has twice received the Norwegian Grammy Award (Spellemannprisen) for his organ album 19.03.04, Oslo Cathedral and for Mazurka — Remaking Chopin (LWC1016).
Nils Henrik Asheim has served as organist of the Stavanger Concert Hall since 2012. He has attracted a wide audience for organ music by developing new concert forms where the organ is combined with other instruments and art forms. In 2018 Asheim released a critically acclaimed album with his own transcriptions of music by Edvard Grieg and Geirr Tveitt, performed on the organ in Stavanger Concert Hall (LWC1151). As an improvisational organist, he has collaborated with artists such as the singer Anne-Lise Berntsen, noise musician Lasse Marhaug, percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love, and many others, most recently with the vocal artist Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer on the release Vox Humana (2018), recorded on the Hildebrandt organ from 1719 in Pasłęk, Poland.
Asheim made his debut as a composer at the young age of fifteen at the Scandinavian Youth Music Festival in Helsinki. In 1978 he won Second Prize in the European Broadcasting Union’s Rostrum competition. He has received commissions from the most important Norwegian cultural institutions, including composing the official fanfare for the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer in 1994, and music for the wedding of the Crown Prince and Princess in 2001. In addition to the Nordic Council Music Prize, Asheim has received the Lindeman Prize, the Arne Nordheim Composer Prize, and the Edvard Prize, among others. His children’s opera, The Tempest, commissioned by The Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, won the European RESEO Opera for Young Audiences Award in 2014. In 2018 he received the Nordic Council Music Prize for Muohta – Language of Snow.

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Johan Harstad

At the age of 22, Johan Harstad made his debut with the short prose collection From Here on In You Just Get Older (2001) and in the ensuing year, his critically acclaimed short story collection Ambulance followed. His first novel, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? was released in 2005 and has since been distributed in 14 countries. A miniseries based on the book was aired on NRK in 2010 and theatrical versions of the novel have been staged in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK. Harstad has also written several plays and in 2009 he was employed as house playwright at the National Theater in Oslo. For the staging of Etc. at the National Theater,...

At the age of 22, Johan Harstad made his debut with the short prose collection From Here on In You Just Get Older (2001) and in the ensuing year, his critically acclaimed short story collection Ambulance followed. His first novel, Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? was released in 2005 and has since been distributed in 14 countries. A miniseries based on the book was aired on NRK in 2010 and theatrical versions of the novel have been staged in the Netherlands, Belgium, and the UK. Harstad has also written several plays and in 2009 he was employed as house playwright at the National Theater in Oslo. For the staging of Etc. at the National Theater, Harstad was awarded the Ibsen Prize. In 2017 he received the Hunger (Sult) Prize, awarded to “young, eminent” authors, and in the subsequent year he earned the European Literature Prize for the Dutch translation of his 1100-page novel Max, Mischa & the Tet Offensive, which has received rave reviews in Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. His only young adult novel thus far, the sci-fi thriller DARLAH, was named best Norwegian young adult novel of all time by newspaper Dagbladet in 2014.

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