Search - Niels Marthinsen, Michel Tabachnik, Århus Symphony Orchestra :: Marthinsen: Monster Symphony

Modernism with a strong sense of fun and excitement

Christopher Culver | 08/01/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"The Danish composer Niels Marthinsen (born 1963) has been writing music since the mid-1980s, but has kept a fairly low profile outside of his native land. I recently heard of him only because he was named the new chairman of Dacapo, the Danish national label and source of many cherished Per Norgard recordings. When I read that Marthinsen studied with Per Norgard, I was intrigued enough to hunt down this CD. Here the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michel Tabachnik performs three of his mature pieces.



Marthinsen's music has absorbed certain features of modernism, such as microtones and complex rhythms, but the focus is always on remaining attractive to the general audience. With its fiery energy and its embrace of at least some of common-practice tonality, Marthinsen's work could be best compared, I think, to the recent output of the Finnish composer Kimmo Hakola (minus Hakola's world music forays).



Marthinsen wrote his First Symphony in 1995, but nearly a decade later decided to cut it up and write new material over the fragments. The result was the "Monster Symphony" (2004). The work is cast in three-movements, fast-slow-fast. The first movement alludes to the doom-filled soundtracks of golden-era monster films. The second might be seen as a short of tone poem, though it is brief. In the third movement, longer than the first two combined, we hear a subdued and fragmented landscape. Here Marthinsen's tutilege under Per Norgard seems especially evident.



"Panorama" (1993) came from an interesting inspiration. Studying late Romantic scores, Marthinsen found that if one erases the melodies, quicker sequences and ornaments, what is left is a slow sequence of chords. "Panorama" is meant to capture this idea of a very slow progression, using orchestration to express character the piece might lack without overt melodies.



Marthinsen's third opera "The Confessional" appeared in 2006, but in order to pique the interest of orchestra audiences, he wrote a four-movement "trailer". It features music from many different parts of the opera, but is purely instrumental. The first movement is based on the initial dreams of the protagonist, and the second a nightmare. In the third movement, we hear a set of variations on a bass melody, and then attaca subito the fourth movement comes in and ends with a "cliffhanger", the prelude to one of the opera's most violent scenes.



All in all, Marthisen's music is the kind of fun new music I'd enjoy at a concert, but not compelling enough that I'd go exploring more of his output on disc, a category I personally put other composers like Jovanka Trbojevic or Esa-Pekka Salonen. I have no idea how readers of this review may make their own distinction between "must collect" new music composers and "that's nice" figures, so in the end perhaps this review isn't helpful at all to guide whether you should get this disc."