Hornflowers by NyNorsk Messingkvintett

Nils Henrik Asheim

NyNorsk Messingkvintett

Hornflowers

Format: CD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020182438
Catnr: LWC 1221
Release date: 06 August 2021
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020182438

Catalogue number
LWC 1221

Release date
06 August 2021

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

In our time, the poet Keats’ famous adage “beauty is truth, truth beauty” might sound like a lost dream, but Nils Henrik Asheim’s collection Hornflowers, reimagines this relationship and brings hope to contemporary ears. Asheim is not a beauty-worshipping esthetician in the same way as Keats, but he examines the idea of beauty through poetic compositions.

Today, beauty and truth appear almost as opposites — truths are disputed and dismantled, while reality can come across as anything but beautiful. The works on this release, performed by the NyNorsk Brass Quintet, are also full of contradictions. Collected fragments, sounds, patterns, words, and dichotomies are utilized as building blocks, freed from their original context and strung together in surprising and powerful constellations. Asheim has also given several of the pieces oxymoronic titles, like Burning Ice, Singing Stones, and Scream Soft, and by this invites the listener to reflect upon differences of opinion and improbable compilations. The brass instruments occupy and explore spaces we do not normally hear them occupy — undressed and playful — and their obvious natural place and inclusion in these constructions is both astonishing and liberating. It is precisely in the surprises, in the contrasts, in the distance between the building blocks and the grout that holds them together, that the uniqueness and tactility of this music is revealed. In this way, Asheim creates his own musical lyricism where beauty and truth are exposed through contradictions and improbabilities.

Artist(s)

Nynorsk Messingkvintett

Erlend Aagaard-Nilsen—trumpet Jørgen Arnesen—trumpet Daniel Weiseth Kjellesvik—horn Ingebjørg Bruket—trombone Berger Iver Færder—tuba NyNorsk Brass Quintet focuses on new, Norwegian music and genre-crossing projects, and since its debut in 2016 has premiered as many as 26 works by composers such as Therese Birkelund Ulvo, Nils Henrik Asheim, and Marcus Paus. The ensemble has also given Norwegian premieres of works by James Tenney and Gerard Grisey. They have created a repertoire with a varied and distinctive soundscape through collaborations with artists such as Tora Augestad, organist Anders Eidsten Dahl, bandoneonist Per Arne Glorvigen, actor Ivar Nergaard, and countertenor Sean Bell. NyNorsk Brass Quintet has appeared at festivals such as Only Connect Festival of Sound, BrassWind, Bergen Kirkeautunnale, and the Egil Hovland Festival, and in the autumn of...

Erlend Aagaard-Nilsen—trumpet Jørgen Arnesen—trumpet Daniel Weiseth Kjellesvik—horn Ingebjørg Bruket—trombone Berger Iver Færder—tuba NyNorsk Brass Quintet focuses on new, Norwegian music and genre-crossing projects, and since its debut in 2016 has premiered as many as 26 works by composers such as Therese Birkelund Ulvo, Nils Henrik Asheim, and Marcus Paus. The ensemble has also given Norwegian premieres of works by James Tenney and Gerard Grisey. They have created a repertoire with a varied and distinctive soundscape through collaborations with artists such as Tora Augestad, organist Anders Eidsten Dahl, bandoneonist Per Arne Glorvigen, actor Ivar Nergaard, and countertenor Sean Bell. NyNorsk Brass Quintet has appeared at festivals such as Only Connect Festival of Sound, BrassWind, Bergen Kirkeautunnale, and the Egil Hovland Festival, and in the autumn of 2019 toured Helsinki and Tallinn. They have developed several of their own concert productions that lie at the intersection between contemporary music, literature, and performing arts, and where Ole Paus and Kjartan Fløgstad, among others, have contributed new texts.

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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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Anders Eidsten Dahl (organ)

Anders Eidsten Dahl (b. 1976 in Drammen) graduated with a degree in church music from the Norwegian Academy of Music and later completed a Master’s degree in solo organ performance at the same institution. Following two years of solo performance study at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, he gave debut concerts in Copenhagen and Oslo in 2003. He has studied organ with Professor Terje Winge, cathedral organist Kåre Nordstoga and Professor Hans Fagius.
Eidsten Dahl is much in demand as organ soloist, chamber musician and harpsichordist, and he has given organ concerts at festivals in a number of European countries. His repertoire spans from the Baroque to the music of today, with emphasis on J. S. Bach and organ music from the Romantic period. Since 2001 he has served as organist and director of music at Bragernes Church in Drammen, where he is artistic and administrative director of the church’s organ concert series.
A recipient of the Government Work Scholarship for Younger and Newly Established Artists, Eidsten Dahl has released a number of critically acclaimed albums on the LAWO Classics label. He is also Associate Professor of organ at the Norwegian Academy of Music.

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Sunniva Rødland (harp)

Sunniva Rødland (b. 1977) is a classically trained Norwegian harpist. She is creative and innovative, with a broad repertoire. Rødland has to date premiered sixteen solo works, and she has had long-term collaborations with a number of composers, often as co-creator in the composition process. She has appeared as soloist at numerous festivals, including the World Harp Congress (Vancouver), AngelicA festival (Bologna), Ultima Contemporary Music Festival (Oslo), and Ilios (Harstad), and she has performed solo concerts with, among others, the Norwegian Wind Ensemble, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra. In 2015 Rødland completed a Ph.D. at the Norwegian Academy of Music under the auspices of its Artistic Research Fellowships Programme. In her project, “Let the Harp Sound!”, she researched the role of the harp in Norwegian contemporary music and offered new perspectives on the instrument. Rødland has done a number of innovative presentations using acoustic and electronic instruments, video, theatre, improvisation and installation. In addition to focusing on her solo projects, Rødland has freelanced as harpist for many years. Since the 1990s she has frequently been hired by Norwegian orchestras as an extra musician, and she has collaborated with ensembles and choirs throughout Norway. Rødland contributes to recordings of orchestras and sinfoniettas such as Ensemble Ernst, Oslo Sinfonietta and Bit20 Ensemble. She has also participated in a number of recordings with artists from other genres, for example, the jazz saxophonist Petter Wettre and pop artist Susanne Sundfør. Rødland’s other solo releases are of Mark Adderley’s “All Plans Last Only Until the First Shot — Live” (LabLabel 2016) and a DVD release of Simon Steen-Andersen’s “History of My Instrument” (Deutsche Musikrat 2020). Rødland studied harp with Willy Postma (Norwegian Academy of Music), Meinir Heulyn and Caryl Thomas (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama).

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Berger Iver Færder (tuba)

Jennifer Torrence (percussion)

Composer(s)

Nils Henrik Asheim (organ)

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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