Fire Walker by Marion Walker

Sergei Prokofiev, Jon Øivind Ness

Marion Walker

Fire Walker

Price: € 19.95
Format: CD
Label: Lawo Classics
UPC: 7090020182810
Catnr: LWC 1259
Release date: 05 January 2024
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Label
Lawo Classics

UPC
7090020182810

Catalogue number
LWC 1259

Release date
05 January 2024

Album

Artist(s)

Composer(s)

About the album

Quintet, Op. 39
Prokofiev's chamber music output is relatively modest—a handful of sonatas, two string quartets, an overture of Hebrew themes for clarinet, string quartet and piano, as well as this quintet for oboe, clarinet, violin, viola and bass.

The quintet, with its peculiar instrumentation and its tonal and rhythmic playfulness— described by some as “successfully circusy”—is a prime example of Prokofiev as an ironist and humorist, a superb craftsman who elegantly juggles his material and produces surprisingly sonorous, tonal and rhythmic kaleidoscopes. The work is one of his most radical, but the crassness of the elements is placated by the lightness of the form—like a kind of polite insolence. As a repatriated Soviet citizen, entrenched in the paranoia of Stalinist cultural life, Prokofiev washed his hands of the Parisian atmosphere, where complex patterns and dissonances were the accepted thing, and which fostered my predilection for complex thinking. The subsequent Soviet phase of his production is characterized substantially by the more sincere style favoured by the regime, yet without the elegance and certainty of style being compromised. Expat works such as the oboe quintet lead one to ponder the tantalising, yet ultimately futile question, what if later Soviet composers had also been allowed to spend some of their formative years in Paris?

Bælþræk, Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola and Cello (2016) / Bælsiþ, Concerto for Oboe and Sinfonietta (2018)
Humour has long been a central ingredient in Jon Øivind Ness's music, ever since he put his perilous life as a cat owner to music in the trombone concerto Dangerous Kitten (1997). In recent years, his music has transformed significantly, from the complex irony of the 90s, via the almost—to quote the composer himself—romantic fervour of the mid-00s, to a microtonally oriented musical language and occasionally ascetic expression in the last 10 years or so. Broadly speaking, there has been a development from the anarchistic maximal to the punctuated minimal (albeit occasionally massive), but as is so often the case, a leopard doesn’t always completely change his spots.

The words Bælsiþ and Bælþræk mean something akin to “Journey of the flame” and “Power of the flame” respectively. Both are old Anglo-Saxon words based on the root word “bæl”, meaning flame. The mixed vowel ‘æ’ and the fricative consonant ‘þ’ appear in both, and are symptomatic of Ness's attraction to musical and linguistic tipping points, thriving particularly in spaces ‘in between’ and in what is undefined, be it between the ‘a’ and ‘e’, or ‘E’ and ‘F’. The music that emanates from this penchant for tonal and phonetic ambiguity nevertheless appears as genuinely heartfelt and straightforward.

Artist(s)

Marion Walker (oboe)

Marion Walker is co-principal oboist of the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and a member of the contemporary music group Ensemble Ernst. Previously she has been employed as Principal Cor Anglais of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and has worked with all the professional orchestras in Norway as well as orchestras in Australia, Sweden and Switzerland. From 1997 to 2004 she was a member of the contemporary group Oslo Sinfonietta.
As an influential pioneer in the oboe community, Walker ventured the first “Oboes and bassoons for Children” project in Northern Europe, using special child friendly instruments with tiger stripes to accentuate that oboists, bassoonists and tigers are in danger of going extinct. The qualities and physical properties of the tiger motivate young pupils.
Recruiting and teaching a large group of 7–8 year olds, developing methods for teaching younger pupils, and cooperating with the national Norwegian Youth Orchestra organisation in connecting and supporting fellow oboists and bassoonists are important parts of this recruitment work.
Walker currently teaches oboe at the Culture School in Kristiansand, and is regularly hired as an instructor for various teacher training programs, orchestral and wind band seminars and Young Talents Masterclasses. Walker has received many scholarships and grants, has had contemporary works written for and dedicated to her and has partaken in many recordings with different ensembles. Walker studied at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, The Conservatory in Geneva and the University of Western Australia. She plays on an oboe made by Howarth of London, model LXV.

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Ensemble Ernst

Ensemble Ernst was founded in 1996 and quickly established itself as one of Norway’s pre-eminent and most entertaining contemporary music ensembles, touring at home and abroad, performing at festivals and releasing albums. The ensemble has won a Spellemann prize (Norwegian Grammy), as well as the Norwegian Composers’ Association's “Performer of the Year”. Ensemble Ernst actively commissions works every year by Norwegian composers such as Jan Erik Mikalsen, Kristine Tjøgersen, Ragnhild Berstad, Jon Øivind Ness and Anna Linh Berg. Ernst has always endeavoured to commission and perform quality acoustic music that communicates with the audience and performers alike. We intrinsically trust that people need first-rate performances of outstanding music. Thomas Rimul has been the ensemble's conductor since the very start.

Ensemble Ernst was founded in 1996 and quickly established itself as one of Norway’s pre-eminent and most entertaining contemporary music ensembles, touring at home and abroad, performing at festivals and releasing albums. The ensemble has won a Spellemann prize (Norwegian Grammy), as well as the Norwegian Composers’ Association's “Performer of the Year”. Ensemble Ernst actively commissions works every year by Norwegian composers such as Jan Erik Mikalsen, Kristine Tjøgersen, Ragnhild Berstad, Jon Øivind Ness and Anna Linh Berg.
Ernst has always endeavoured to commission and perform quality acoustic music that communicates with the audience and performers alike. We intrinsically trust that people need first-rate performances of outstanding music.
Thomas Rimul has been the ensemble's conductor since the very start.

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Thomas Rimul (conductor)

Thomas Rimul received his diploma in conducting from the Norwegian Academy of Music in 1998. He is artistic director for Ensemble Ernst, one of Scandinavia’s leading contemporary music ensembles, chief conductor of Arktisk Sinfonietta in Tromsø, and he has established himself as a distinguished interpreter of contemporary music. With these, and with other orchestras and ensembles, he has conducted first performances of over a hundred works. The Norwegian Society of Composers honoured the conductor, together with Ensemble Ernst, with its ‘Performer of the Year Award’ in 2011.
Rimul has conducted most of Norway’s major orchestras, and he regularly accepts invitations from the professional bands and other institutions associated with Norwegian musical life. He has recorded with Ensemble Ernst, Bodø Sinfonietta and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, among others, and he received Spellemannprisen (Norway’s Grammy) for 2017 together with Ensemble Ernst.
Rimul has taught at the Norwegian Academy of Music, and in the spring of 2017 he completed a two-year fellowship at the University of Stavanger.
Through his involvement in the project “Transposisjon” he has on a number of occasions conducted Vietnam’s national symphony orchestra and taught Vietnamese conductors.

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Sara Övinge (violin)

Sara Övinge started playing the violin at four years old and had her first soloist performance with her local Symphony orchestra in Norrköping at the age of nine. At 16 she started her Bachelor at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, followed by Solo Diplomas at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and the Royal College of Music in London.
During her education Sara was a multiple prizewinner; she was the youngest ever diploma graduate from Oslo, she won “The Listeners’ Prize” in the Swedish Soloist Prize and the Ljunggrenska competition for Young Musicians in 2010. Sara has performed as a soloist with many of Scandinavia’s leading orchestras, including Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and Trondheim Symphony Orchestra.
Sara was appointed Associate Concertmaster at the Norwegian Opera & Ballet in 2014, a position she left to fulfill her passion for an eclectic range of performance and music making. She is a member of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and the contemporary music ensemble Cikada and has been guest Concertmaster for Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra.
Sara has personally collaborated with many of Norway’s leading artists, including Bugge Wesseltoft, Nils Bech, Kjetil Bjerkestrand, Trygve Seim, Anja Lauvdal and Eivind Aarset. Besides working with non-classical musicians, Sara has also explored the possibilities in movement combined with violin playing and created, in 2018, a solo performance with choreographer Gunhild Bjørnsgaard that had its premiere at the Contemporary art center in Armenia. She also had the main role in the music theatre performance of Verklärte Nacht with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, winning the YAMawards in 2019.
Sara engages passionately in education, teaching at Barrat DueInstitute of Music, the Norwegian Academy of Music, and Voksenåsen Summer Academy.
Sara currently plays on a Giovanni Battista Guadagnini from 1754, generously loaned to her from Dextra Musica.

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Anders Rensvik (viola)

Ingvill Hafskjold (clarinet)

Gunnar Hauge (cello)

Marius Flatby (double bass)

Composer(s)

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev was born in the countryside of Ukraine. He studied from 1903 at the conservatory of St Petersburg, under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Anatoli Liadov among others. He was educated as a composer, pianist and conductor. Initially, he made a name for himself as a pianist. In 1918, he left the Soviet Union for the USA, but wasn't able to succeed, and he decided to move to Paris in 1920. His concert tours brought him back to the Soviet Union in 1927, who lured him back for good in 1936. Prokofiev died in march 1953, on the same day as Joseph Stalin.
Prokofiev is considered as one of the greatest Russian composers of the twentieth century, even though he wasn't a great innovator. He generally applied the strict classical forms and structures to his works and focused on a classical tonality, with a few exceptions of expressive dissonants and incidental bitonality. Yet, he is only explicitly neoclassicistic in his popular 'Classical Symphony', his first symphony composed in 1917. Many of his works show his humour, while his later works presented his darker, more serious side. One of his best known works is the musical fairytale Peter and the Wolf, which is popular among children all over the world.

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Jon Øivind Ness

Jon Øivind Ness (b. 1968) studied guitar (1987—89) and composition (1989—1995) at the Norwegian Academy of Music with Olav Anton Thommessen, Lasse Thoresen and Ragnar Søderlind as his mentors. Ness won the Norwegian Society of Composers ‘Work of the Year’ award in 1993 for his orchestral work Schatten. He was nominated for the Edvard Prize in 1997, 2000 (2 nominations) and 2002, winning in ‘97 and ‘00 for Cascading Ordure and Dangerous Kitten, respectively.
Ness was composer of the year for Trondheim Symphony Orchestra (2002—03), Oslo Philharmonic (2012—13) and Bodø Sinfonietta (2012). Ness’s music has been nominated three times for “Spellemannprisen” (Norwegian Grammy Awards), and he won in 2010 with the CD Low Jive, together with the Oslo Philharmonic. Ness’s tonal language is based on the use of bi- and polytonality developed structurally (or sometimes only coloured) with quarter tones. He tries to approach microtonality from different angles — spectral, untuned, melodic (especially from Arabic traditional music). In recent years he has devoted himself more to arranging music in other genres. His project in 2012 together with Diamanda Gálás and KORK was singled out by Wire editor Rob Young as the third most important international musical event of 2012. Since then he has tried to create artistically challenging arrangements in which classical instruments replace rock instruments using various contemporary music techniques, something which culminated in the Bowie project that he undertook together with Bård Bratlie, Peter Estdahl, Thomas Rimul and KORK in January 2020. He has also arranged/adapted music of Sibelius, Grieg, Sæverud, Clash, Burt Bacharach, Javid Afsari Rad and Harpreet Bansal.

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