MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger


 REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK AmazonUS
Download: Classicsonline


Klaus Ib JØRGENSEN (b.1967)
Moon-Pain (2003-8) [47:06]
Goblin Dance (2005) [17:30]
Lisbon Revisited (2008) [8:00]
Iris Oja (mezzo); Remix, KlettWood (Goblin Dance)/Paul Hillier
rec. 1-5 April 2008, Casa da Musica, Porto (Moon-Pain), 19 and 21 September 2008, Københavns Musikskole (Goblin Dance), field recordings at various locations (Lisbon revisited).
DACAPO 8.226505 [72:33]
Experience Classicsonline


Klaus Ib Jørgensen’s work has been represented by a few works already released on the Dacapo label, but his is a name unlikely to be familiar to many. Seen as his most important work to date, the substantial song cycle Moon-pain for mezzo-soprano and chamber ensemble sets the moon-themed poems of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) to music which responds to the texts in a highly personal and multi-layered language. The treatments range from the Sprechstimme elements in ‘In Silence and Moon’ and elsewhere, through colourful fragmentation of the words or their employment almost as pure sound, and a consistently restless atmosphere of complex melodic shapes and an uncompromising atonality. The cycle concludes with a short instrumental full-stop of stunningly serene beauty.

This kind of music is hard to tie down to a single genre. I hear moments of Berio and Schoenberg here and there, but in the end it has to be said that Jørgensen is his own man. His settings of Moon-Pain are infinitely subtle and delicate, while at the same time robust and with a sense of firm inevitability. They are composed with a fine ear for detail and the sense of drama in Pessoa’s words, but have an airy freedom which occupies a place in today’s response to the romantic traditions founded by Mahler and Zemlinsky: though once again, without the Teutonic weight of any kind of Germano-Austrian historical legacy. Jørgensen’s is a sound-world which requires a certain kind of key - not so much in terms of comprehension, but in allowing oneself become aligned with his magnetic pole. My old flute teacher Gareth Morris firmly believed players only came to like avant-garde modern music because they became used to it through endless repetition, and audiences only through a kind of perverse sense of intellectual duty. I don’t have that feeling through the performances on this recording, which have a sense of vibrancy and communicate a compulsive conviction with the quality in these pieces. The composer’s response to the constantly shifting moods of the poetry is something to which the listener becomes increasingly attuned through the duration of the piece, and on repeated listening. Singer Iris Oja certainly makes the best case for this work, with an accuracy and range of expression which draws one in immediately. She can sing conventionally with the best of them, but sample also her instrumental equality with the rest of the players at the beginning of the second in the cycle, Moonlit.

The six movements of Moon-Pain are interwoven here with two other, related compositions: Goblin Dance (2005) for clarinet and piano, and Lisbon Revisited (2008). The former, recorded at a different location, inhabits a similar kind of musical world, with the clarinet taking on the solo voice of the ‘singer’. The three movements of this piece provide a change in colour and a respite from the interactions of string instruments, though even while the textures thin the intensity remains essentially in place, with the vast potential of the clarinet explored to the full in sudden changes of direction, fluttering and breathy transformations of notes, extreme squeaks and plops. Hard to describe as this is, the music has more substance than words can suggest, with momentary glimpses and snatched fragments of potent invention, and a final movement of sublime Moon-Silence. Lisbon Revisited is a combination of recorded sounds from the streets of Pessoa’s home town of Lisbon, a poem by Pessoa in a variety of languages, and fragments of the Moon-pain music. This works very well to my mind, casting an atmosphere of Portugal and the origin of the poems, combining elements of language in surreal contexts but without over-complexity or pretension. One of the voices is that of Konrad Boehmer who I know quite well from my time at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague, so I had the added dimension of Dutch familiarity popping out of the unknown and the abstract. The little fragments of distant fado singing and the jaunty ballet piano combined with Jørgensen’s own music coming from the same distant perspective are touches of brilliance. Just a slightly longer pause between this and launching into Lunar Land might have made more sense, but this is a very minor quibble.

This has the potential to be a ‘difficult’ programme, and if you musical world goes no further than 1913 then this will be outside your comfort zone. If you are attracted to this by Paul Hillier’s name then you will need to expect something entirely different to the early music or Arvo Pärt recordings for which he is better known. This is however one of those projects which just seems to ‘work’, forming a musical experience which is more than the sum of its parts. I must admit I found myself resisting to a certain extent in the initial phases of listening, but once having applied myself to a serious appraisal of the disc I was soon charmed into uncommonly magical and rarefied realms.

Dominy Clements

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.