Crossing Borders - Sonograma.org


Carme Miro, http://sonograma.org
Tirsdag, 5. december Link to original article

Paul Hillier and Ars Nova Copenhagen continue their exploration on the Danish vocal music. Paul Hillier's professional life is a compendium of events in which the Danish artist has taken on artistic risks and has never missed any opportunity. This is essential to alleviate and grow a creative activity. 

Crossing Borders , who places a title on the album, brings together works by various composers. 

Highlight the work Vox Reportageby Line Tjørnhøj, which was composed in close collaboration with the artists; One of the most notable features is that it unites several sources such as the Nobel Prize in 1981, Elias Canetti, Chelsea Manning and Rabi'ah in Adawiyya (Iraq from the 8th century). 

In the Three Motets, Op.55 , by Carl Nielsen, the virtuoso style of the polyphony is elaborated with great exquisiteness. He composed them inspired by the Polyphony of Palestrina. Maybe it is a sensible honor. 

Crossing Borders shows a time of change: postromanticism and the new language of the twentieth century. This is the music that goes from Carl Nielsen to Line Tjørnhøj going through Niels W. Gade, Wilhelm Stenhammar and Vagn Holmboe.

It is worthwhile to say that only a good interpretation is a unit in the repertoire. The unmistakable imprint of the daring voices of the Ars Nova Copenhagen heart that interpret these works, all of them so special and so peculiar, directed by the always great Paul Hillier, make this record a tribute to Scandinavian music. The works collected in this recording, made in the Garnisonskirken, Copenhagen, refer to intimate inner emotional states, of great intensity, but each one demonstrates, in their own way, that what we do reflects the limits that we or others configure. In poems, there is a strong presence of feelings, oblivion, memory, darkness, light.

We listen with delight to the work of Niels W. Gade, who was Denmark's most important composer attached to the late romantic tradition. The work Two Border Ballads by the composer Vagn Holmboe, is little known outside of Denmark; Their ballads refer to the borders between Scotland and the counties of Northumberland and Cumbria. 

In the notes on the album, we learned that Vagn Holmboe was a mentor of Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, ( see review ). 

It is a record that predicts a future full of freedom ... we need it.