Search - Langgaard, Ars Nova Copenhagen, Veto :: Langgaard: Rose Garden Songs [SACD]

Utterly Beautiful Choral Songs by Denmark's 20th-Century Rom

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 09/28/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"There is a growing appreciation for the music of the Danish romantic composer, Rued Langgaard (1893-1952), primarily because of recordings of his symphonies, his opera 'Antikrist', and his sprawling, idiosyncratic 'Music of the Spheres' ('Sfaerernes Musik'). This is the first of his music for a cappella choir to come my way, although I notice this CD was previously released in 1997 in regular stereo. This issue is in clear and lifelike SACD sound which makes an immediate impact.



The music here consists of three songs with secular texts, a three-song collection called 'Rose Garden Songs' set to poetry of Thor Lange, and fifteen motets and hymn melodies, all sung a cappella in Danish by the striking Danish choir, Ars Nova Copenhagen. There is not one song here that isn't simply gorgeous. Some are more arresting than others, though. For instance, 'Hostfuglen' ('The Harvest Bird') imitates the bird's call in a song that equates the last bird of fall with melancholy, but a melancholy that makes you smile. 'It's as if sorrow wishes to make one happy.' The second of the Rose Garden Songs, 'Bag muren sidde de rosersma' ('Behind the Wall Stand the Little Roses') may indeed be the eccentric composer's own thoughts about being either ignored or derided in his own country: 'Behind the wall stand the little roses/no one casts a glance thereupon...' as a persistent tenor/bass line eventually wins out on the line 'Better to have been burnt at the stake/than never to have known love.'



The motets and hymn melodies are mostly late works, written only after Langgaard finally obtained a position in 1940 as organist of Ribe Cathedral. They are primarily conservative in nature, although with Langgaard's highly personal harmonic sense. Among those that catch one's particular attention are the almost Salvation Army-like 'Doden er den sidste fjende' ('When, One Day in the Distant Future'); the two different settings of 'Den store mester kommer' ('The Great Master is Coming'), the first with striking false cadences, the second almost a Bachian chorale; 'Im memoriam Ansgarius' with elements of Gregorian chant; and a hymn for the Church Militant, 'Op, I kristne, ruster eder' ('Rise, Ye Christians, Prepare for War').



Ars Nova Copenhagen is a spectacularly talented 12-voice choral group founded in 1979, at the time of this recording led by Tamás Vetö. Their work here is impeccable.



Scott Morrison



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