Vintersong - Vaage/Vogt/Karlsen by Daniel Sæther

Knut Vaage, Herman Vogt, Kjell Mørk Karlsen

Daniel Sæther

Vintersong - Vaage/Vogt/Karlsen

Format: CD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020182582
Catnr: LWC 1236
Release date: 23 September 2022
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020182582

Catalogue number
LWC 1236

Release date
23 September 2022

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

All the music on this CD has the countertenor as a common denominator. There is something beautifully unsettling about hearing a male singing in the register of a female singer. It throws us back to a, fortunately, bygone time when the same vocal properties were reached by the barbaric practice that produced the male “castrati”. Nowadays, male singers who wish to sing in this register develop their falsetto and head voice techniques in a natural way.

The three composers represented here are all honest seekers who choose to adopt different musical approaches according to their temperaments. In some cases we hear an explicit adherence to more traditional tonality. In others the connection to a tonal root is tenuous at best. Yet, each and every piece in these recordings has a particular beauty born of its inner necessities. And it is all recognizable as music.

Artist(s)

Daniel Sæther (countertenor)

Countertenor Daniel Sæther studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal Academy in Den Haag. He has performed as a countertenor in Norway and abroad since 2011 with a wide-ranging repertoire from early music to contemporary. From 2018–2020 he was awarded the Norwegian government grant Statens Arbeidsstipend to work with contemporary music for countertenor on baroque instruments and document this in concerts and recordings. In the summer of 2023, Daniel featured as Cesar in the Trygve Brøske’s contemporary opera Kommandanten held at the Oscarsborg open air Opera. Sæther is a founding member of Ensemble Freithoff and Christian IV Consort (now known as Ensemble C4), both of which perform chamber music in Norway with a focus on Renaissance and Baroque music. In...

Countertenor Daniel Sæther studied at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and the Royal Academy in Den Haag. He has performed as a countertenor in Norway and abroad since 2011 with a wide-ranging repertoire from early music to contemporary. From 2018–2020 he was awarded the Norwegian government grant Statens Arbeidsstipend to work with contemporary music for countertenor on baroque instruments and document this in concerts and recordings. In the summer of 2023, Daniel featured as Cesar in the Trygve Brøske’s contemporary opera Kommandanten held at the Oscarsborg open air Opera.
Sæther is a founding member of Ensemble Freithoff and Christian IV Consort (now known as Ensemble C4), both of which perform chamber music in Norway with a focus on Renaissance and Baroque music.
In 2020, Sæther released the album Unexpected Songs (LWC1204) for which he was nominated as Singer of the Year at the German Opus Klassik awards in 2021. His second solo album in 2022 Vintersong (LWC1236) achieved nominations in four categories.

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Composer(s)

Kjell Mørk Karlsen

Knut Vaage

Knut Vaage (b. 1961) lives in Bergen, Norway, where he works as a composer. He graduated as a pianist and composer from the Grieg Academy in Bergen and has worked with various styles of music, focusing mainly on improvised and contemporary music. Many of Vaage's projects have explored the boundaries between improvisation and composition. The development of an acoustic/electronic hybrid soundscape is another significant aspect of his music. Vaage’s musical output ranges from symphonic works to opera and solo pieces. His compositions are frequently performed at concerts and festivals both in Norway and abroad, among them Bergen International Festival, Ultima, Borealis, Ilios, Grec Festival (Barcelona), Prague Spring Festival, Nordic Music Days in Stockholm and Reykjavik, the ECCO festival (The European Contemporary...

Knut Vaage (b. 1961) lives in Bergen, Norway, where he works as a composer. He graduated as a pianist and composer from the Grieg Academy in Bergen and has worked with various styles of music, focusing mainly on improvised and contemporary music.
Many of Vaage's projects have explored the boundaries between improvisation and composition. The development of an acoustic/electronic hybrid soundscape is another significant aspect of his music. Vaage’s musical output ranges from symphonic works to opera and solo pieces. His compositions are frequently performed at concerts and festivals both in Norway and abroad, among them Bergen International Festival, Ultima, Borealis, Ilios, Grec Festival (Barcelona), Prague Spring Festival, Nordic Music Days in Stockholm and Reykjavik, the ECCO festival (The European Contemporary Composers Orchestra), and in Carnegie Hall. His operas have been staged at The Norwegian Opera & Ballet, Ultima, DNS in Bergen and NOSO in Tromsø, and abroad at Pfalztheater, Stadttheater Giessen, Theatre National Luxembourg (TNL) and at the Armel Opera Festival in Hungary.

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Herman Vogt

Herman Vogt (b. 1976 in Drammen, Norway) studied composition with Bjørn Kruse, Lasse Thoresen, Olav Anton Thommessen and Henrik Hellstenius at the Norwegian Academy of Music from 1999 to 2004 . He completed a master’s degree in composition with Asbjørn Schaathun at the same institution in 2018. In 2003 Vogt studied composition with Martijn Padding and Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. He studied violin at the Norwegian Academy of Music from 1995 to 1997.
Vogt’s music has been featured at the World Music Days in Sydney, Australia (ISCM Festival) and Belgium (ISCM and Transit Festival), Nordic Music Days in Copenhagen and Stockholm, the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival in Oslo, the Borealis Festival in Bergen, and at other festivals in Norway and abroad.
His music has been performed by Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, BIT20 Ensemble, Oslo Sinfonietta, Athelas Sinfonietta, pianist Ian Pace, violinist Geir Inge Lotsberg, cellist Timo-Veikko Valve, organist Anders Eidsten Dahl, conductors Edward Gardner, Vasily Petrenko, Pierre-André Valade, Baldur Brönnimann, Christian Eggen, Ingar Bergby, Peter Szilvay and Per Kristian Skalstad, and by a number of other ensembles and musicians in Norway and abroad.

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