Now
in his early fifties, Hans Abrahamsen has a substantial output
to his credit, and one that perfectly illustrates this composer’s
untiring quest for expression. His early works seemed to belong
to what is often referred to as New Simplicity - implying that
the music often had some minimalist ring). His later output
finds him exploring different paths, as is fairly evident in
pieces such as Stratifications and Nacht
und Trompeten recorded here. His recent Piano Concerto
might yet be a further step into some new territories. His music,
however, resists any all-too-easy classification; and rarely
yields all its secrets; if at all. It is often quite allusive
and epigrammatic, if not at times frankly enigmatic; but his
is a distinctive voice in present-day Danish music, as several
earlier recordings have amply demonstrated. Some may remember
two earlier DaCapo releases, 8.224080 with some of his pieces
for sinfonietta conducted by Elgar Howarth and including one
of his finest works to date Lied in Fall for cello
and ensemble as well as his orchestration of Nielsen’s Three
Piano Pieces Op.59, also heard here, and DCCD 9006 including
his two string quartets.
Abrahamsen
also is interested in re-visiting works by other composers,
and his re-workings of works by Nielsen, Bach or Schoenberg
“are a dialogue through which [I] find [myself] in aspects of
another composer’s music”. This release thus also provides for
an opportunity to hear some of these re-workings.
The
very title of Stratifications points at the content
of this multi-layered piece that opens with four brief shots
after which the music gathers some momentum, with ever increasing
concentration and ending rather abruptly on a high violin unison,
as if the different strands of the music had now coalesced in
one single sound.
Nacht
und Trompeten appropriately opens in a dreamy, mysterious mood in which tiny fragments
(trumpet calls, horn calls) briefly flash through the nocturnal
haze, obliquely alluding to Mahler. The central, almost minimalist
section builds to a Stravinskian climax reminiscent of The
Rite of Spring leading into the slow coda, again alluding
to Mahler. Again and again Abrahamsen alludes to composers
of the past without ever directly quoting their music. This
is much more a matter of mood than of literal quotation in an
attempt at achieving some “new kind of listening to the material”
- thus Thomas Michelsen in his informative insert notes.
Reviewing
this new release was a most welcome opportunity to re-visit
his Piano Concerto that I heard during the 2003 Ars Musica festival
in Brussels, and that had left me rather puzzled. True to say,
repeated hearings of this often enigmatic piece have not completely
cleared my view of the piece, but have helped hearing things
that had eluded me two years ago. Abrahamsen’s Piano Concerto
is for piano and ensemble including a synthesiser, if I remember
well, and is in four movements, all of which but one are fairly
short. The piece opens with a short preludial movement in which
the music, as it were, freezes after a minute or so (the movement
lasts less than two minutes). This is followed by a comparatively
long slow movement Adagio innocente e semplice, that
true to its title is far from simple indeed. It opens with a
long solo for piano made of isolated notes interspersed with
silences. The ensemble creeps in, disrupting the apparent simplicity
and tranquillity of the opening with nervous, almost aggressive
gestures. The piano, however, restores the opening mood, albeit
now in the bass register. There follows a short agitated Scherzo
flickering capriciously before moving into the slow final movement
in which the ensemble briefly erupts again, but the piano has
the last word and concludes the piece in ethereal mood.
As
already mentioned, this release also includes several of Abrahamsen’s
re-workings of music by other composers, in this case Bach,
Nielsen and Schoenberg. The piece by Nørgård heard here is more
an orchestration for chamber orchestra than a real re-working.
The Bach arrangement is particularly interesting and successful,
although it holds some surprise in stock. In fact, Bach’s chorale
gradually emerges from two melodic fragments borrowed from Poul
Ruders’ Four Dances in One Movement; and, as Michelsen
notes, the metamorphosis from Ruders to Bach can be accomplished
because both of Ruders’ fragments are in fact “hidden” among
the parts of Bach’s chorale. This arrangement is a very fine
piece of music indeed, and quite different from Stokowski’s
larger-than-life Bach orchestrations. Nielsen’s Three
Piano Pieces Op.59, composed in 1928 and published posthumously
in 1937, belong to his more searching and ‘modern’ pieces full
of unexpected harmonic twists, even including a twelve-tone
row, although Nielsen used it his own way. Abrahamsen’s highly
efficient orchestration for chamber ensemble is also available
in Da Capo 8.224080 (London Sinfonietta conducted by Elgar Howarth),
as is his re-scoring for chamber orchestra of Nørgård’s Breaking
(on Kontrapunkt 32140). This arrangement was done to mark Nørgård’s
sixtieth birthday. Abrahamsen chose to orchestrated only four
pieces from Schoenberg’s Sechs kleine Klavierstücke Op.11
of 1911, i.e. the four slow pieces of the set, so that this
re-working has an undeniable elegiac quality.
This
release usefully illustrates several aspects of Abrahamsen’s
music making and thinking, be it in his own music or in his
re-working of other composers’ works. I would have favoured
an all-Abrahamsen disc, since a number of his pieces are still
unrecorded; but the present release is as fine an introduction
to this composer’s personal sound world as might be desired.
Excellent performances caught in fine recording. Well worth
investigating.
Hubert
Culot
Anne Marie Abildskov (piano)b; Danish National Symphony Orchestra/DRa;
BIT20 Ensemblebc; Thomas Dausgaarda, Ilan Volkovbc
