L'homme armé - Works by Ketil Hvoslef by Sjøforsvarets musikkorps

Ketil Hvoslef

Sjøforsvarets musikkorps

L'homme armé - Works by Ketil Hvoslef

Format: CD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020182452
Catnr: LWC 1223
Release date: 25 June 2021
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020182452

Catalogue number
LWC 1223

Release date
25 June 2021

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

The Norwegian Naval Forces' Band (SFMK) has become acquainted with Ketil Hvoslef, both as a person and as a composer, over a period of several years. This musical cooperation and these personal encounters have been invaluable for SFMK.

Hvoslef's generation is not one with a close connection to the digital world. He has only recently learned to use email. Our face-to-face meetings have given us a clear insight into his personal approach to music, as well as a richer perspective on the music than what the score alone could grant us.

It has always been both desirable and natural for SFMK to engage with local composers and commission works from them. Having a well established composer with such a clear voice in Norwegian cultural life in our midst, it was only a matter of time before we approached Hvoslef about a possible cooperation. It began with the work L’homme armé from 2012, which lends its title to this release.

Hvoslef has a secure place in Norway’s music history canon. He can be considered a bridge between his father Harald Sæverud’s generation and today’s younger composers. Hvoslef is entirely uncompromising in his approach to composition and seems to have only a casual interest in the musical environment. According to him, his only contact with cultural life is listening to Italian radio and he claims that he has little idea of what other Norwegian composers are up to. One can sense this clearly in his music; he is true to himself and his ideas whether he writes for wind band, chamber groups or symphony orchestras. It has been enriching for the Norwegian Naval Forces' Band to partake of the inebriating bubble inside which Hvoslef and his music have invited us.

— Norwegian Naval Forces' Band (SFMK)

Artist(s)

Sjøforsvarets musikkorps

The Norwegian Naval Forces’ Band has roots dating back to 1792 and makes its home in Bergenhus Fortress in Bergen.
It is one of Norway’s five professional military bands, and consists of 27 highly educated, rigorously professional musicians who make up a dynamic and exceptionally versatile ensemble.
The band performs in a variety of military and civilian settings and covers a wide range of musical genres: traditional military, classical, jazz, pop, rock, folk, and contemporary. It has particularly distinguished itself in the field of contemporary music with numerous first performances of works, festival performances, critically acclaimed CD recordings, and, not least, as recipient of the Performer of the Year Award for 2008 given by the Norwegian Society of Composers.
The Norwegian Naval Forces’ Band is otherwise a flagship of the large concert band community in Western Norway and an example for thousands of band musicians of all ages. It maintains a wide range of programs for children and young people throughout the region.
Commanding officer is Trine Minken Amble, Lieutenant Commander. Ingar Bergby was the band’s artistic director from 2015 to 2020. He was awarded the Norwegian Society of Composers’ Performer of the Year Award for 2010 together with the artistic director from 2011 to 2013, Peter Szilvay.
As the Norwegian Naval Forces’ Band enters new and exciting times, it continues to offer the best of both tradition and innovation!

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Ingar Bergby (conductor)

Ingar Heine Bergby is one of Norway’s leading conductors, with many achievements within classical music, opera, and contemporary and crossover music. He has distinguished himself as an artist with the power to shape ideas and one with passion and dedication to his work. Bergby was born in 1964 in Sarpsborg, Norway into a musical family and began playing band music. He studied clarinet with Richard Kjelstrup at the Norwegian Academy of Music and later orchestra conducting there with Karsten Andersen, as well as with Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy. He received a degree in conducting with honours from the Norwegian Academy of Music in 1991.

Ingar Heine Bergby is one of Norway’s leading conductors, with many achievements within classical music, opera, and contemporary and crossover music. He has distinguished himself as an artist with the power to shape ideas and one with passion and dedication to his work.
Bergby was born in 1964 in Sarpsborg, Norway into a musical family and began playing band music. He studied clarinet with Richard Kjelstrup at the Norwegian Academy of Music and later orchestra conducting there with Karsten Andersen, as well as with Jorma Panula at the Sibelius Academy. He received a degree in conducting with honours from the Norwegian Academy of Music in 1991.

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Composer(s)

Ketil Hvoslef

Now in his 80's, Ketil Hvoslef continues to write music at a furious pace. He has written for many thinkable and unthinkable ensembles, often relishing the challenge of working with potentially «hopeless» instrumental combinations. He is Norway’s most prolific composer of concertos, with 20 to date. He has three operas, numerous works for orchestra, and a wealth of chamber music. Hvoslef’s vocal music is of particular interest in that it includes, for the most part, «nonsense texts». Aware of the main pitfall of the Bel Canto tradition, where the beauty of tone in the vowels often results in the unintelligibility of the text, Hvoslef usually constructs his own «meaningless» words in order to underline the character of the music. He...

Now in his 80's, Ketil Hvoslef continues to write music at a furious pace. He has written for many thinkable and unthinkable ensembles, often relishing the challenge of working with potentially «hopeless» instrumental combinations. He is Norway’s most prolific composer of concertos, with 20 to date. He has three operas, numerous works for orchestra, and a wealth of chamber music. Hvoslef’s vocal music is of particular interest in that it includes, for the most part, «nonsense texts». Aware of the main pitfall of the Bel Canto tradition, where the beauty of tone in the vowels often results in the unintelligibility of the text, Hvoslef usually constructs his own «meaningless» words in order to underline the character of the music. He has also composed an impressive collection of works for solo instruments and a fair amount of incidental music.
Hvoslef’s style is characterized by an economy of means, the accumulation of latent energy, rhythmical ingenuity and, often, an element of humour. He has repeatedly said that he wishes for his listeners to lean forward on the edge of their chairs rather than sit back. There is, in Hvoslef’s music, always a sense of anticipation, a feeling that it is on its way to somewhere unknown, which in turn makes the experience of each moment all the more intense. There is always transparency in the music, allowing it to breathe and making it possible for the listener to follow what is happening in it.

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