Search - Harald Saeverud, Geirr Tveitt, Eivind Groven :: Norwegian Classical Favorites, Vol. 2

Very interesting and colorful

Anton Karidian | Tennessee | 09/16/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is indeed Volume 2 of the NORWEGIAN CLASSICAL FAVOURITES, though you'd never guess that from looking at the front cover. Oddly, although the front doesn't say "2" on it, both the spine and back cover do! Also odd is the fact that Amazon just gives samples for the first 9 tracks, although the disc actually has 17 tracks, and the total run time is 64:42. I enjoy both volumes very much, and while this Volume 2 is not radically different from Norwegian Classical Favourites Volume 1, several of the pieces on Volume 2 are substantially more modernistic. This is not surprising when you notice that most of the composers on Volume 1 lived primarily in the 19th century, while most of those on Volume 2 lived primarily or totally in the 20th century. However, while such 20th century musical devices as atonality, highly irregular rhythms, and so on are prominant on several pieces here, I find those pieces to be creative and unusual rather than bizarre, while other selections on the disc revert to the more "traditionalist" or Romantic style. Also, sometimes this music sounds Scandinavian to me, although I have no idea how to define that. If the music of Sibelius sounds Scandinavian to you, then perhaps these pieces will too.



The Iceland Symphony Orchesta, conducted by Bjarte Engeset, performs very admirably. Also, the sound quality is clear and well-balanced, and the CD includes an informative booklet with about 3 pages in English. The booklet discusses the struggle between traditionalist Norwegian composers (represented by Volume 1) and modernists (Volume 2) beginning in the 1920s. It says "Norwegian art of the sort that was inspired by the Norse sagas and elemental forces has been in bad odour ever since the last war (World War I)." Nevertheless, many pieces on Volume 2 were still based on Norwegian folk tales, folk music, and literature, such as Saeverud's "deromanticized" music for the Ibsen play "Peer Gynt." Other than the famous Edvard Grieg on Volume 1, as far as I know the composers on both discs are not very prominant worldwide, yet most have at least a few recordings listed in my The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009, so they're not unknowns either. Part of the attraction of these discs for me was in hearing composers I was not familiar with. In fact, I like this music enough that I'm going to explore more of their recordings."